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“Body in the abyss, but heart in paradise.”
Jun Wu went straight to Tonglu after that. Every step he took, rock cracked under his feet. The mountain groaned. Lava bled from its orifices while blood burned within him.
He walked mindlessly until he collapsed at the lip of the kiln.
Body in the abyss…
The ghost who haunted the Yi Nian bridge was his oldest creation: back when he still cared enough about righteousness to bother and convince himself that what he had done was right. That was before his new heaven had even been set aloft, before he was Jun Wu. Back then, the ex-prince of the former Wuyong could still feel soreness like a distant earthquake in his chest.
The Yi Nian ghost had been his first purge of that weakness. By then, he knew what he had to become, and scoured himself of every maudlin ache.
He studied rituals, killed their forbearers, and improved upon them. He made the incisions himself.
His heart, his heart had to go.
And away it went, leaving him no less alive.
The ghost clambered out of the open kiln. Jun Wu had pitied it, and smiled, for he was now blissfully empty. He felt weightlessness as he hadn’t felt since his first ascension. This initial creation would now bleed and suffer in his place. Like tending to a dear pet, Jun Wu built a little bridge for the ghost to guard:
Yi Nian.
One Thought. One Memory. One Yearning.
The ghost made that bridge its home. When mortals wanted to start crossing that pass, they should have damn well built another one.
While it existed, the ghost bore the privilege of single mindedness, of remaining lost when the Emperor of Heaven could not afford to. All the while, a new muscle formed in the void within Jun Wu’s chest. It pumped all the same. It did what it needed to do.
And yet, Jun Wu could still feel his flesh bursting beneath his armor when the ghost was slain.
...Heart in paradise.
Ha. Hasn’t it been buried by you, Xian Le?
What is your pitiful civilization, crawling like ants over my territory? What is in your chest, that you could possibly know ANYTHING that could happen to a heart?
Little grub of Xian Le, I could make you into something better than a pathetic hunk of muscle, beating uselessly in ‘paradise’.
Jun Wu excavated the rotten mass and flung it back into Tonglu.
Maybe this time it’d make a better monster.
Jun Wu returned to heaven an incense time before Xian Le ascended. Gods thronged around him, chattering like cicadas.
“Your Majesty, what do you think of that crown prince of Xian Le?”
Jun Wu smiled.
“This child’s future is limitless, impossible to measure.”
.
The first year of Xian Le’s ascension, Jun Wu went to Tonglu on a monthly basis. Every day, there was more to purge. Every word, every movement, every hopeful striving of that stupid child grated at him.
But there was potential there. Jun Wu began to set plans into motion.
He spent over a year guiding and molding the boy, speaking of strategy in war, meticulous to ensure that nothing he said could be construed…
Wrongly.
In a sense, the rhetorical contortions he had to make in front of the prince were much like those he had made back then, carrying out his revenge: convincing himself with each kill, convincing himself as he buried Wuyong once and for all, convincing himself as he slaughtered the heavens--
That he was in the right.
He wondered what Xian Le would think when the boy would be forced to commit the same acts.
“Xian Le, do you know the story of my lowest moment?”
Xian Le’s eyes shone bright. “Mm. After your aides had betrayed you, when you were surrounded on all sides with only a force of less than a thousand to yourself. That was when you found the buried white armor, allowing you to rout your enemies that day.”
“Yes. Now, mortal scholars have debated this for quite some time, but I’m curious what you think, Xian Le: Was it by chance that I found that armor? What might I have done were there truly nothing left to me?”
Xian Le paused, thinking.
“...Well, no matter what, you wouldn’t have lost your heart. I always thought that was what led you to find it--a reward for your determination. Haha, is that too naive, My Lord?”
Jun Wu just smiled. Xian Le still had so much to learn.
.
When gods ascended, they transcended mortal form. In gaining immortality, of course certain things would be lost. A stab through the heart could not kill a powerful god--so, what was a heart to such a being?
Jun Wu’s original heart had been smashed to mush countless times. The beating muscle residing in his chest was no more or less his heart than the organ which now lay fermenting in Tonglu. No matter how many times he took it out, in time, the tissue would heal and the aching would return. No armor could prevent this.
Xian Le was very much like him, how Wuyong’s prince used to be. At times, sparring--losing his mind in the excitement and strategy that came with a worthy opponent--Jun Wu nearly forgot himself.
Or, rather, he remembered himself.
Nearly.
.
The kid had two vassals. One day, Jun Wu paid Xian Le a visit, and caught them quarreling before they noticed his presence. Xian Le, however, noticed his entrance immediately, and shot Jun Wu a self-effacing glance. Jun Wu returned it, laughter in his eyes.
The two servants reminded Jun Wu of two of his own disciple brothers.
(Neither, however, reminded him of the one who hurt him the most, for all his caring. For all his love.)
Xian Le herded the two vassals away to play idioms, then greeted the Great Martial Emperor. They chatted. He tested him.
Testing, Jun Wu was always testing Xian Le with riddles and hypotheticals. Sometimes he told stories of the things he had learned on the battlefield; sometimes he told stories of things he had overseen in court. Xian Le listened raptly to the general’s experience, soaking it in as any filial student.
And in the end, it was always, “This disciple thanks my lord for his guidance,” or, “This crown prince has been humbled,” or “Xian Le’s mind has been expanded. I will study this paradox further.”
Xian Le trusted him.
And that was risky.
--For Xian Le would need to know that his friends betrayed him. That the common people he so cherished were nothing more than a headless rabble that only obeyed power. But Xian Le still needed to come back to Jun Wu, in the end. Not entirely out of trust either. Loyalty required fear, as steel required heat--to burn off the impurities. Xian Le had to be guided, had to learn that Jun Wu’s path for him was the only road left to him. And, moreover, he couldn’t be so close that he’d expect Jun Wu’s support when he suffered, nor could he be so close that he’d feel so viscerally betrayed by him that he’d become less than a hollow shell.
Xian Le was a dear investment; he had to be cultivated carefully, like a rare flower. Hammered diligently, like a precious sword.
Jun Wu hummed.
“Xian Le, you praise too much. Is there truly no one else in your life who you can speak with as you do with me? Not Mu Qing or Feng Xin?”
Xian Le appeared baffled for a moment. Then he smiled benevolently. “Of course, I do sometimes have refined discussions with Mu Qing and Feng Xin. But, in addition to you, there would also be my master, the head priest of Xian Le. Actually, some of your allegories are quite similar. It is eternally edifying to hear them from multiple perspectives.”
Jun Wu looked forward, betraying no expression.
What did that mean, ‘some of your allegories are quite similar’? Hadn’t the one he posed today, the one about the water in the desert, hadn’t that come from a folktale unique to Wuyong? Who was that head priest?
And what sort of designs did he have on the prince?
“Which ones--” Jun Wu intoned carefully. “--Are similar?”
Xian Le looked up to the clouds, contemplating, then listed a few in succession. Some of their structures were slightly different, but Xian Le’s answer was always the same:
The third path, whatever lay beyond the fixed set-up, the defiant young god would find it, and take it for himself.
Something tumbled in Jun Wu’s vast chest as he listened. When he left, he told Xian Le he’d be gone for a month or so, to wander the mortal realm.
Before, he had had his suspicions. Now, when he went down to visit that charlatan psychopomp, he berated himself for not realizing it before.
So that’s where he ran to…
The two old men engaged one another carefully, both believing that they revealed nothing, both knowing otherwise.
Jun Wu could see the fear behind the head priest’s eyes. He felt the itching in his own face.
They had figured it out too.
After that enlightening excursion, Jun Wu made his way to Tonglu.
It was quiet today. The air was cool, as though someone or something had sucked all the sweltering heat from the landscape. Swift as the breeze, Jun Wu descended into the kiln. He emitted his own light, a kind that wouldn’t be suffocated by the darkness.
The kiln was different than he last left it--such an evil place, it tended to mess with people’s minds, even that of its own master. This time, it seemed as though the rock had melted in a very special way, like lightning on a beach: every surface surrounding was reflective. Warped every which way by the walls of this place, Jun Wu scanned the area, searching for his work in progress.
As he walked deeper into it, as he circled, the warping grew more intense. Jun Wu saw himself growing more and more monstrous, his form slithering along the walls even as he kept a smooth pace. The faces began to act up. Echoes of his footfalls reverberated and slammed back at him like the cries of the dying. Jun Wu suppressed them, and began to float rather than walk. But he still caught glimpses, in his reflection and in the echoes of the sound that had not yet dissipated.
He stopped abruptly, then looked squarely at the wall.
All at once, they screamed in his ear.
He lashed out, driving a fist through the glass. Blood splashed over his face. Even stuck through with shards, his arm remained numb.
“SHOW YOURSELF.” he roared.
All around him, the glass shattered and rained down. The sound echoed, grew louder every moment.
Until, abruptly, it stopped.
Jun Wu retracted his fist, which now held a plump, beating heart. He looked forward, where a figure shrouded in white silk stood, behind a mirror made from something liquid and permeable, a ghost of glass.
“I am you,” his reflection answered. The mirror’s crack seemed to shrink into a single line running down the middle of his face.
Half smiling. Half crying.
For a moment, it was Jun Wu’s old face, as it had been when he was a prince, disfigured by the curse of his three murdered friends. Slowly, however, the flesh solidified into a mask--smooth and white and unstained by the blood around him.
Jun Wu appraised the creature. Then, with a pleased smile, he spoke to it. The other’s lips moved with his:
“You will be powerful. You will not be like the others. A trade is in order.”
Without hesitation, Jun Wu removed his armor, and the thing in his reflection reached a strong, spindly hand out, drove its nails into his chest.
He didn’t convulse. He didn’t even whimper. He had been through this too many times before.
Jun Wu looked down at the heart he had been using in the other’s ghastly white hand. No better or worse than the one he held in his own. Stupid thing had grown back.
One replaced the other, and the masked figure laughed.
Jun Wu did not cry. He gave the creature instructions as he put his armor back on.
It would have to feed from the molten brew of broken souls for just a little while longer. Jun Wu sealed the kiln behind him, that this new monster might inspire an explosive legend on its emergence--
A model for things to come.
Very soon, this world would know terror. Would know Devastation as only he knew.
Would know what it meant to have a heart in the abyss.