Mynovel Chapter 129 129 | Strange Alliances
Chapter 129 129 | Strange Alliances
Bai Hu stopped in front of Mei Yuling.
The chamber went still around him.
Broken prisms lay scattered across the floor, each shard reflecting a different angle of the White Tiger's face. In one, his mouth looked almost amused. In another, the blood at his lips seemed darker. In the largest piece near Eathan's foot, his eyes were black enough to swallow the the entire chamber's light.
Mei Yuling did not step back.
That alone made Eathan's fingers tighten around his scanner.
The silver-haired Paladin stood with her hands low at her sides. The karmic threads around her fingers had already gone slack, though whether from fear or calculation, Eathan couldn't tell. Her expression remained composed, though a tiny movement at her throat betrayed the swallow she failed to hide. She knew the stories too. Everyone in the room did.
The Pale Judgment had returned. Not whole, perhaps, but enough.
Bai Hu looked down at her.
For one breath, Eathan thought this was it.
Judgment.
Beside him, Chewie's blades dimmed a fraction, satisfaction sharpening her small face. Even Quine Long had gone quiet. His half-lidded eyes rested on Bai Hu, all performance tucked behind a thin smile.
Bai Hu lifted one hand.
Mei Yuling's pupils narrowed.
Then he stepped past her.
The movement was simple enough that it took the room a moment to understand it.
He walked around Mei Yuling, turned at her shoulder, and came to a stop beside her instead.
On the Paladins' side.
At that moment, Eathan felt something akin to every organ being twisted and scrunched up in his stomach at once.
Chewie's mouth opened first. "Boss?"
Bai Hu didn't look at her.
Ji Renshu's hand tightened on her spear. Yue Shiyin's fan, retrieved from the wreckage, hovered half-open in his grip. Yang Mingze looked from Bai Hu to Mei Yuling and then back again, brows drawing together as if trying to decide whether they had just won or entered a different kind of disaster.
Chen Mo's face lit with ugly wonder.
Quine Long, meanwhile, stared at Bai Hu for one long beat. Then his smile vanished.
"Ah," he said softly. "How disappointing."
Eathan's blood went cold. He knew enough of the Azure Dragon by now to understand the danger in that softness. Quine made jokes when annoyed. He became polite when his patience had left the building.
Bai Hu finally turned his head toward the Azure Dragon. "Disappointing?"
"You do remember who we are, yes?"
"That is precisely the issue."
The voice was certainly his. Dry and smooth and familiar enough to hurt. Too familiar, almost. Yet something in the timing landed wrong, too flat and too clean in the places where Taeril White usually let mockery cut.
Eathan took a step forward. "Mister White."
Bai Hu's gaze slid to him, and Eathan's stomach dropped further.
He reached for [Karmic Insight] on instinct, only for the [SYSTEM] to answer with a cold little chime.
[Karmic Insight] is currently unavailable!
Cooldown Remaining: 51h 41m
Of course.
Of course the one skill that might have helped him check whether Mei Yuling had planted something in Bai Hu's head while they were gone was still dead in the water.
Chewie noticed his expression. "Eathan?"
"Cooldown," he said through his teeth.
Her eyes flicked once toward Bai Hu, then Mei Yuling. "So we can't check."
"No."
Across the chamber, Mei Yuling looked no more comfortable than they did. If her technique had succeeded, she did not seem particularly delighted by the result. She stood beside Bai Hu with the careful stillness of someone holding an umbrella in a lightning storm.
Ji Renshu recovered first.
"Commander Bai Hu," she said, each word chosen with caution, "our orders are to retrieve and secure your core under His Greatness's authority."
"I heard."
Eathan's pulse thudded once.
Bai Hu was still standing beside Mei Yuling, beside the Paladins.
The image simply refused to make sense.
Quine Long folded his hands into his sleeves. "How obedient. Truly, death has changed you."
Bai Hu gave him a sidelong look. "You shoved a core fragment into my chest without explanation."
"You were being difficult."
"I was incomplete."
"Historically, that has never stopped you from being difficult."
A faint line appeared at Bai Hu's mouth. For half a second, Eathan thought he might smile.
He didn't.
Instead, Bai Hu's gaze dropped to Quine's sleeve. To the dark stain at his ribs. To the way the Azure Dragon held himself too elegantly, hiding the injury by refusing to acknowledge the body that carried it.
"You retrieved it," Bai Hu said.
Quine Long's face stilled.
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Eathan looked between them. "Retrieved what?"
Chewie's eyes narrowed at once. "The gold shard."
The Azure Dragon sighed, deeply put upon by having to explain a thing he had clearly intended to be appreciated without context.
"The Pillars of Lost Intentions," he said. "Very self-important place with terrible acoustics. One cannot brood properly there without being interrupted by someone else's unrealistically utopic ambitions."
Eathan stared at him. "You went there alone?"
"I am, contrary to certain rumours, extremely capable."
"You fought one of his core fragments by yourself," Chewie said.
Quine Long gave her a wounded look. "Must you make it sound so inelegant?"
"Did you kill it?"
"I encouraged it to stop wandering."
"That means you killed it."
"It was a fragment of Bai Hu's duty," he said. "It argued like him, scowled like him, and tried to ignore every inconvenient emotion by calling it a strategic liability. Frankly, I found the whole encounter nostalgic."
Eathan stared at him, and activated [Calamity Radar].
Fragment signature:
RESOLVE
Resolve.
The shard signature was still fresh; it carried oath and duty—things heavy enough to keep the rest of Bai Hu standing. Quine Long had found it, fought it or persuaded it or whatever eloquent lie he preferred, carried it here, then forced it back into Bai Hu before shoving him into the Ruthless Shard.
Two major fragments had returned in the span of minutes.
No wonder the chamber still felt unstable under their feet.
Chewie took one careful step forward, her blades fading to red outlines around her hands. "Boss. If you're back, then come here."
A muscle tightened in Bai Hu's jaw.
"My core remains incomplete," he said. "The Jade Deity ordered retrieval at all cost. Until the final recoverable shard is secured, the Paladins' mission aligns with mine."
Eathan went cold.
"Mister White?" He said, and hated how rough his voice sounded. "That's not—"
It was then the chamber blurred at the edges for a second.
No. Not the chamber.
Him.
He caught the edge of his HUD in the corner of his sight, flickering over broken mirrors and blood.
[HP]: 21%
[Humanity]: 38%
His ribs ached with every breath. His throat tasted like blood and dust. He didn't even have to look to know that [Soul Anchor]'s stability window was finally fading. Every scrape, dive, fall, shard, fight, spell, and ugly little miracle from the last day slammed into him at once. He had been moving because stopping would mean thinking, and thinking would mean feeling the cost.
Now his body had apparently decided to resign.
Chewie's voice cut through the ringing. "Eathan?"
He tried to step forward anyway.
His vision pulsed black.
Someone said his name. Maybe it was Chewie, or maybe Quine Long.
Bai Hu's face doubled. The mirrors behind him stretched into bright, useless lines. Eathan reached for the wall and missed it entirely.
The last thing he saw was the White Tiger standing beside Mei Yuling, gaze unreadable, while the Paladins drew in behind him.
Then the Sanctum went black.
***
He woke to motion.
A steady, heavy rise and fall, accompanied by the unpleasant sensation of his stomach being folded over a metal beam.
For one wild second, Eathan thought the Nine-Headed Infant had finally found him again and was carrying his body downriver for storage.
Then his eyes snapped open and registered armour, red qi residue, and an enormously broad back.
Yang Mingze.
His soul attempted to leave the realm again.
"What the hell—" His voice came out scraped raw. "Why am I being carried by enemy furniture?"
Yang Mingze glanced sideways without breaking stride. "You woke up."
"Put me down."
"You fainted."
"And now I'm awake, so put me down!"
"Worry not," he said dryly. "You were draped very securely."
Eathan shoved at his shoulder. "Down."
Yang Mingze snorted, but he crouched enough for Eathan to slide off instead of falling. His legs nearly betrayed him the moment his boots hit the floor. He caught himself on a mirror wall, remembered where he was, then regretted touching anything in this cursed maze, and immediately pulled his hand back.
They were still inside the Reverie Sanctum.
And everyone was moving together.
That was the second horrible realization.
Chewie walked near the front beside Ji Renshu, both of them wearing identical expressions of mutual disgust. Yue Shiyin moved close to the center with his fan in hand, tracking every shift in the corridor. Mei Yuling kept slightly behind him, quiet, her gaze trained forward. Chen Mo had been positioned very deliberately behind Yang Mingze and several steps away from Bai Hu, which meant somebody had decided to at least put survival instincts while Eathan was unconscious.
Quine Long strolled near the rear as if they were touring a garden, though now that Eathan knew what to look for, he could see the signs. His right side stayed too still. His smile arrived a little late whenever anyone looked directly at him.
And Bai Hu—
Bai Hu walked at the front.
Again, beside the Paladins.
Eathan's stomach turned.
Chewie heard him moving and dropped back at once. "You're alive."
"Apparently." He looked from her to Ji Renshu, then to Yang Mingze, who was still close enough to throw him over one shoulder again if he felt inspired. "Why are we marching in formation with Heaven's worst personality cluster?"
Yang Mingze barked a laugh.
Ji Renshu did not turn. "Temporary cooperation."
"I was unconscious for how long?"
"Long enough for the adults to make decisions," Quine Long said pleasantly, to which Chewie shot him a look.
Eathan rubbed his forehead. "Someone explain before I pass out again out of spite."
Chewie glanced at Bai Hu's back, lowered her voice, and fell into step beside him.
"After you dropped, boss made it very clear that nobody was leaving until the final shard in the River was retrieved."
"He threatened them?"
"He clarified," Ji Renshu said from ahead.
Chewie's mouth curled. "He said if they attempted to interfere with shard retrieval, he would eliminate them without hesitation."
Eathan went still.
Yang Mingze, walking close enough to hear, gave a grudging grunt. "Said that His Greatness might be displeased by the loss of his Paladins, but sincerely doubted he would mourn us over the White Tiger."
"And?" Eathan asked.
"And then," Yue Shiyin said from ahead, dry as dust, "Then he invited us to test the theory."
That should have sounded monstrous—and it did. Yet under the horror came a flicker of relief so sharp Eathan resented himself for it.
Because that sounded like him.
Terrifyingly blunt and impossible to argue with.
Chewie leaned closer. "He also said if anyone touched you before you woke up, he'd remove the offending hands and submit them as evidence of attempted mission obstruction."
Eathan blinked.
Yang Mingze lifted both hands briefly. "I carried you by the torso. No hands removed. Technical compliance."
"You call that compliance?"
"I call it having hands."
Eathan ignored him with a roll of his eyes and instead stared at Bai Hu's back. The relief that rose in him was messy and unwelcome. If Bai Hu had said that, then maybe—
Maybe what?
Maybe he hadn't been influenced? But maybe he had. Maybe the Attachment Shard still cared while the Resolve and Ruthless fragments had given him enough structure to pretend obedience?
He couldn't tell.
And [Karmic Insight] remained dead.
Then, Chen Mo's voice drifted from behind them, sweet and poisonous. "How touching. Bai Hu's little mortal toy collapsed and received a pity clause."
Eathan turned his head enough to meet him. "Jealous?"
Chen Mo smiled. "Of you?"
"You keep looking at me like I got invited to a family dinner you've been stalking through the window."
The smile thinned.
Chewie made a quiet, delighted sound. "Oh, that one landed."
Ji Renshu's voice cut through before Chen Mo could answer. "Enough."
Bai Hu finally spoke from the front.
"Save your words for the River."
Everyone shut up.
Even Chen Mo.
Eathan looked at the his back and felt the same confusion coil through him again. The command had been absolute, but it had also included him in the same breath as Chen Mo. As if they were both nuisances orbiting the same center.
Mei Yuling passed them without comment, then slowed down beside Eathan just long enough to speak under her breath.
"You fainted quite dramatically."
He stared at her. "You hypnotized my boss."
"Allegedly," she said, and walked on.
That did not help.
"So," Eathan whispered to Chewie, "we're supposed to be allies now?"
"Temporary," Ji Renshu said.
"Nasty," Chewie said.
"Strategic," Yang Mingze corrected.
"Repulsive," Chen Mo added, eyes still on Eathan.
Bai Hu's voice came from the front, quiet and final. "Necessary."
Everyone stopped talking. He did not look back.
The corridor ahead widened. The mirror walls darkened, and the reflected light of the Sanctum gave way to a dull silver shimmer far beyond the next arch. Eathan knew that colour before he saw water.
Oblivion.
The River waited beyond the next stretch of stone.
The shard they had lost. The Nine-Headed Infant's trench. The screaming water that ate memory and spat out grief.
Eathan swallowed.
Yang Mingze adjusted his gauntlets. "For the record, I hate river jobs."
Chewie looked over. "For the record, I hate that you're still talking."
"Look at that," he said. "Team morale."
At the front, Bai Hu stepped through the archway first, white hair catching the River's distant light. Ji Renshu followed on one side, Chewie on the other, neither trusting the other enough to look away.
Eathan slowed. Quine Long fell in beside him, hands tucked in his sleeves.
"Cheer up," the Azure Dragon said helpfully. "At least now everyone is equally unhappy."
Eathan shot him a look, then took in the procession ahead: Paladins, warlord, dragon, half-restored tiger, all walking toward the same hungry river because somehow that was the least doomed option.
He let out a long, long sigh.