Chapter 382 - Great Danger

  Hopeless…

  After seeing the battle’s end on the threads, Yuzu was filled with a feeling of hopelessness. The serpents were strong, but there was still a way to beat them. The boy, on the other hand, was on a completely different level.

  The only reason there would be a battle was because the boy was initially content with letting them fight his scarf. He could end the fight at any time.

  The conversation between Char Char and the boy brought Yuzu’s attention back to the present.

  “I’ve met your sword, a long time ago. I’m curious how it ended up with you.” The boy said, “Though its spirit seems to currently be asleep.”

  “My sword has a spirit?” Char Char asked incredulously, looking down at the sword.

  Only a few dozen seconds, less than a minute had passed since Yuzu started cycling furiously through fate. They were only a sentence away from the boy’s final words before he would initiate the battle that would end in their deaths.

  Yuzu had already tried reasoning with the boy, distracting him, and other actions to try to stop him, but inevitably he was set on killing them.

  Their threads on the tapestry of fate were taut and twisted in a terribly tight knot.

  But what Yuzu didn’t understand was, why? They didn’t know each other, they had no quarrel. Yuzu was certain that the frog spirit that had led them to this pce held no hostility toward them. In fact, the boy was clearly reluctant to fight them. His words to initiate the fight were, ‘It’s a pity…’, after all.

  Does it have something to do with the corruption? Yuzu frowned, heart already racing from anticipation. That’s true, the tapestry only started turning bck in the single future where we forced him to fight us directly. Otherwise, he holds back from intervening directly. Could it be that the corruption is attracted to him?

  Even as she tried to come up with a solution, she heard the fated words.

  “It’s a pity…” The boy sighed with regret, “But—“

  “AH!” Yuzu excimed, causing everyone to look at her. Even the serpents fred their fins in surprise.

  This interjection caused the boy to hesitate, but Yuzu didn’t actually have anything to say. She only knew she needed to break the flow of conversation somehow. However, what could she say to convince this person when she didn’t know the first thing about him?

  An awkward silence fell on the group, but this only sted for a few seconds before the boy sighed again, shaking his head, “It’s a pi—“

  “Wei!” Yuzu interrupted him again with a nonsensical noise. Then, still at a loss for words she raised her finger and shook it at him, “Y—you!”

  The boy narrowed his eyes at Yuzu, frowning. A mere moment ago he was ready to initiate a brutal attack. But now he was confused, his train of thought thrown off. And somehow, miraculously, this was managing to change the flow of the conversation. The golden tapestry shimmered and blurred, the weave loosening ever so subtly.

  In these precious few seconds of reprieve, Yuzu cycled furiously through the upcoming conversation that had opened up, until a name appeared in her search.

  “Tenza! We’ve— we’ve been looking for you!” Yuzu excimed, keeping the urgency in her voice, “You’re in great danger!”

  “I’m in… great danger?” The boy’s expression darkened with cynicism. However, hearing his name unexpectedly he couldn’t help but be dragged into Yuzu’s flow.

  “The corruption… As you know, it’s attracted to us. The longer we stay in this region, the more danger we’re in.” Yuzu shook her head sagely,

  “This is why we have summoned you with the lodestone. We’re here to help.”

  With these words doubt finally crept into the boy’s eyes.

  This was, of course, the exact reason why he had come. Once activated, the lodestone was a beacon of spiritual essence shining across the mountain range. Tenza had instantly rushed over, knowing that the corruption that was devouring the region would be attracted as well.

  These four Exalted were not strong enough to resist the corruption that was soon to assault and feed on them.

  Furthermore, Tenza himself was not strong enough to fend off the corruption. With time against him, he made the difficult choice to solve the problem by killing the intruders.

  But little did he know, this group that he was about to kill without mercy was actually looking for him all along.

  “You’re here to help me?” Tenza blinked, still utterly confused. However his face still flushed as he realized what a horrible mistake he had just nearly made, “Wait, what are you here to help me with?”

  “We’ve been tasked by Yuima Herself to cleanse this nd of corruption. However to do so we must enter the Heavens Gate Monastery,” Yuzu said, voice brimming with confidence.

  The frog still on Yuzu’s shoulder picked this moment to puff its chest and let out a loud supportive croak.

  “Shut up, you!” Tenza scowled at the frog, “Don’t act as if you knew already all this!”

  If the boy had a moment to think about Yuzu’s cims, he might have rejected them. Yuzu didn’t give him the chance.

  Of course she wouldn’t. After all, this entire line of conversation was being completely improvised on the spot. It was really a stroke of luck that Yuzu had even come across this solution, as he did not give any clue about his motives at any point before or after attacking them. It was only from seeing the alternate future where Char Char had destroyed the scarf and forced the boy to kill them himself, thus drawing the corruption, that Yuzu saw what his intent was.

  “Time is against us, however the corruption hasn’t found us yet.” Yuzu said solemnly, “If we can reach the monastery before nightfall, we should be able to avoid it completely.”

  “You can predict the movements of the corruption?” The boy’s eyes widened incredulously.

  “To some extent, yes.”

  “We’ve just come from Ika vilge.” Firuzeh chimed in at the perfect moment, “Where we successfully cleansed the Wailing over the entire vilge.”

  The surprise in Tenza’s expression showed that he hadn’t heard of this feat. Such a cim was unbelievable, but somehow more credible given the rest of the information presented to him.

  After all, how would they know his name, and that his chief concern with their group was the corruption that pgued the nd?

  Their cim of being affiliated with Lord Noga and Yuima was also outrageous, but something he could verify in less than a day’s time.

  Yuzu let out a silent sigh of relief as the knot of fate finally rexed completely.

  “You’ve come at a bad time.” Tenza said solemnly.

  “The corruption is at its strongest during the full moon.” Yuzu nodded, preempting him by speaking the very words he was about to say, “As the sun wanes it will become more active and seek us out directly.”

  “Indeed. Your understanding of corruption is quite impressive.” Tenza looked impressed, “And you say you are able to counteract it directly?”

  “To some extent… There are two forms of corruption that I’ve come across. The first takes the form of a blight on living creatures. It’s not immediately dangerous and takes time to develop. The second are creatures which have been overwhelmed by corruption. They appear to lose all reason and sanity and are filled with an insatiable hunger. The first I have methods to deal with. The second is a bit more tricky.”

  “I see…” Tenza’s eyes darkened.

  Yuzu had given this topic quite some thought recently, and she was now all but convinced that the affliction Lord Matsuhara was suffering from was directly reted to Corruption in the region. Due to the nature of their quest, gathering information about Corruption seemed more and more critical.

  She'd encountered the first type of corruption twice now, which she decided to name Corruptive Blight. In Ika, it took the form of a sticky bck residue that covered the golden strings of the vilgers. The Wailing, then, was a type of corruption. And during the spring Yuzu had come across it as the Devileyes parasite, which pgued the people of her hometown. Back then, she had thought that it might have simply been some kind of side effect of the Domain of Life infecting a human, but there were two things wrong with that theory.

  First, if the Devileyes was a spiritual pnt, why would the Devileyes pnt take the form of a ‘residue’ on a person, rather than have its own string? Second, why was Yuzu able to ‘kill’ it with a brush of her fingers?

  Yuzu’s power to destroy the Devileyes parasite was unique. Not even the best Exalted doctors under Lord Noga could treat it. Even Hakuya, the priest of Nature who had concocted a medicine from biltishroom, went to great lengths to only have middling success.

  I definitely don’t have the power to directly kill something simply by touching their string… That would be… terrifying. She shuddered a bit at the thought. Therefore… it supports the idea that my powers are somehow perfectly suited to counter Corruptive Blight directly.

  As for the second type, these were monsters that were fully consumed by corruptive energies, which the Exalted termed ‘Corrupted Ones’.

  The three headed monster in the Ika mines was a Corrupted One. As was Prince Deka, the God of Life, who nearly became a god level Corrupted One when his resurrection ritual was sabotaged. The threads of these monsters were completely different. They were like razor wire to touch, and extremely dangerous for Yuzu to read, let alone change.

  There were both types of corruption in the wilderness of the Zhongshan mountains. Large swaths of the mountain were affected by Corruptive Blight, and within the blight were many, many monsters.

  Come to think of it, there’s a source of corruption that I’ve come across… When an Exalted rises to a new level, the process is extremely taxing on their body and soul, and if they fail there is a rge risk of becoming a Corrupted One…

  Without the Sun God’s amulet, Char Char wouldn’t have simply died from consuming the Chaos sarira, she most likely would have become corrupted herself. It was a fate worse than death. From Yuzu’s understanding was the main reason why it was so important to use specific catalysts and sarira from one’s specific pathway to ascend…

  For the most part, though Exalted were aware of corruption and guarded against becoming corrupted, it seemed that most of them did not have any deep knowledge of what exactly corruption was or where it came from. If corruption really were the source of the issues in Huan and with Lord Matsuhara, this was knowledge that Yuzu would have to somehow attain.

  First things first, let’s find Lord Matsuhara and confirm what the problem is… Yuzu frowned. And then we’ll see how deep of a hole I’ve dug myself into by promising Lord Noga that I have the ability to fix it. Well, actually my exact words was that the White Maiden was ‘aware’ of Lord Matsuhara’s issues, and that She ‘might’ be able to help…

  Pushing these awkward thoughts to the back of her mind, Yuzu broke the brief silence, “Regardless, for now our main objective is to reach the Heaven’s Gate Monastery.”

  “I have some bad news for you, then…” Tenza frowned, “The monastery’s main entrance has been swallowed by corruption. The monks have sealed off the other exits to try to slow its spread.

  “It’s currently impossible to contact the monks or enter the monastery.”