Chapter Text
The teahouse where they met wasn't particularly upscale by their standards, but it was comfortable and, more importantly, discreet. It also offered refreshments that your typical god would consider edible, which wasn't always a given in Ghost City. “It's unusual to get a social call from you,” Hua Cheng said, draping himself against the table with a bored air. The skin he wore was just as tall as his true one, but nearly skeletally lanky, and much more obviously undead. The residents had gotten so used to him wearing just his true skin and the occasional frivolously pretty thing that this and a slight masking of his qi was all it had taken to avoid the fawning masses. “Although I suppose since you weren’t able to make it to the celebration of Puqi Shrine’s reopening, I don’t mind your attempting to make up for it,” he added, deliberately misinterpreting the purpose of the meeting.
“You don’t think I'm capable of making a friendly visit to an unfriendly acquaintance unprompted?” Pei Ming asked good-naturedly, pouring himself a cup of tea. He had toned down his appearance as well, although he wasn't truly disguised; he had just dressed down enough to avoid attracting undue attention.
“Not if there aren't any eligible women involved,” Hua Cheng deadpanned.
“In my defense, ineligible women can also work.” Pei Ming studied his cup carefully and sniffed it before he drank. Judging from his expression, the taste must have confirmed that it was just ordinary tea of decent quality with no suspect ghostly additives. “You're right, though; I didn’t ask to meet just for the benefit of Crimson Rain's lively company. To put it bluntly: there's a conspiracy brewing against your husband.”
Hua Cheng noted with a small measure of appreciation that Pei Ming didn't hesitate on that last word, unlike many among the Heavenly Court. “What gave you that idea?” he asked. He maintained his air of outward nonchalance despite the tensing of every fiber of his being. With a tremendous show of control, he kept his killing intent from flooding the establishment and sending the other patrons fleeing.
“The ones responsible said it right to my face. They wanted me to help with their disgraceful little plot. They even had the gall to suggest that it would be easy, given the current state of his cultivation,” Pei Ming answered, his nose wrinkled with disgust. “I think I sent them away more politely than I should have,” he said, rubbing a fresh scrape across the knuckles of one hand, “since they still seemed to be hoping I'd change my mind after I had some time to think about it.”
Hua Cheng lazily leaned his head on one hand and began to consider whether he would humiliate the conspirators into committing suicide or torture them to death himself. Perhaps he could do a bit of both. “Then why come to me, and not His Highness directly?” he asked. He happened to know that Xie Lian wasn’t doing anything important at the moment. He was just passing the time mediating a territorial dispute in the south; it was nothing he couldn’t be pulled away from at a moment’s notice.
“I don’t like them,” Pei Ming said succinctly.
Hua Cheng huffed a single, surprised laugh.
Pei Ming tempered his words: “Not so much that I would make something up to accuse them of, but enough that I’m interested in seeing how you feel like handling things. You can just tell him yourself, if you like.” He took another sip of his tea, gauging Hua Cheng’s reaction. “If they haven’t changed their plans, their next meeting is this evening at the ringleader’s palace. It’s the one with the garnet and opal pillars out front.”
Hua Cheng’s desiccated lip curled in distaste. “I remember the one. It held up the rebuilding; there was so much gold in that tacky facade that the architect needed to redesign the foundation to keep it from falling over under the weight. I suppose it makes sense that this would come from someone who would put his entire budget into a gilded face, leaving nothing but unornamented brick and ceramic for the rest.”
The corner of Pei Ming’s mouth turned up. “I didn’t realize you were an architecture critic,” he commented.
“I’m a critic of everything,” Hua Cheng answered.
“Not of His Highness,” Pei Ming said, his tone dangerously close to teasing.
“Especially of His Highness,” Hua Cheng said, leaning forward. “It just so happens that he only earns glowing reviews.”
Hua Cheng’s boots clicked on the freshly hewn jade cobbles of the new Heavenly Capital, providing a counterpoint to the jingling of his silver chains, the bells on his sword belt, and his dangling jewelry. Although he again wore his true form, he had embellished his wardrobe heavily for the occasion in order to drive his message home: don’t forget who bankrolled your new playhouse.
Dressed as he was, the Heavenly Officials milling about on the streets could hardly fail to take notice of him. He was used to many of them clearing out when he made his occasional appearances on the jade avenues, but now, even those brave few who had in the past hazarded to call out a cautious greeting or ask after Xie Lian’s health hesitated and backed away, eyeing the angry flock of wraith butterflies trailing the Ghost King.
When he arrived in front of the pillars marking the entrance to the gaudily adorned palace, he scowled. Such a tasteless misuse of gemstones in his color almost felt like a personal affront. He regarded them for a moment before setting his butterflies to dismantling them. He was sure he could find a better use for so many high-quality garnets, like grinding them into powder and sending them to the bottom of the sea. He shoved his way through the door, only just holding back from tearing it off the building entirely, resolving to save that energy for the conspirators. He was a force of nature, not a rampaging beast.
Though he had made his entrance with no intention of subtlety, it seemed the trash were so intent on their treachery that the front door’s complaints didn’t even cut through their conversation; their voices made it to his ears before his wrathful footfalls and jangling adornments had fully announced his arrival to them. On a whim, he found himself tucked around the corner from their meeting room, listening in on their drivel while he chose his moment.
“...still thinking Ming Guang will come around,” one of them said. “We just need to find the right way to persuade him. How long did he serve under the Emperor? You don’t just put aside a loyalty like that, especially not for a twice-banished traitor and a ghost, of all things. Once he’s convinced the plan is foolproof, I’m sure he’ll join us.”
“I hope so,” said another voice, “but I think it’s best if we have a backup plan, just in case. Maybe we could try something that doesn’t need so much muscle: rather than taking them on in a coup ourselves, what if we just went for a prison break? The mountain where the rightful Emperor is being kept can’t be that well guarded; there isn’t any public record of any martial gods being posted to watch it, and I haven’t been able to observe any unaccounted-for absences that would point to secret assignments, either.”
“And once he’s out,” someone concurred, “he can just wipe out the traitors and put himself back in power for us! We’d hardly need to do anything; what a great idea!” There was the sound of multiple gods laughing and thumping each other on the backs.
When the excitement over finding an even more cowardly way to disgrace themselves died down, the first voice spoke up again. “Not that I don’t like the idea, but if we do that, there’ll be less chance for us to prove ourselves to the Emperor and get promoted for our loyalty…”
“How about this?” said someone with the air of a leader. Hua Cheng thought he recognized the voice as belonging to the man with the horrifically gaudy taste in design. “We make a few more overtures to Ming Guang and a couple of our other leads, and if we still don’t have any of the stronger martial gods on board by the end of the season, we’ll pivot to the jailbreak idea. In the meantime, we’ll split our efforts between padding our numbers and gathering intelligence on the state of the security around Tonglu.” There was a babble of approving noises. “Does anyone object?”
Hua Cheng slinked around the corner; as it happened, the leader was facing away from the door, so he was able to stalk up behind him, watching the expressions of his co-conspirators twist with various shades of horror and fear as he approached. He casually leaned his silver-clad forearms on the back of the leader’s chair and said, “I do.”
Slowly and hesitantly, the leader turned his head, as if Hua Cheng would only truly be there if he turned to see him, and as long as he didn’t look, he couldn’t be slaughtered for his mistakes. “Cr–ah, Crimson Rain Sought Flower…” he stuttered, breath catching in his throat.
With that name uttered, it was as though a spell had been broken. The co-conspirators scrambled out of their seats, tripping over their chairs in their haste, more than one falling flat before managing to get their feet under them. Those who were armed drew their blades and pointed them, hands shaking, in Hua Cheng’s direction, but none of them dared approach him, not even to make a break for the room’s sole exit at his back.
Hua Cheng stepped away from the leader’s chair, crossing his arms and allowing the leader to make for his subordinates. He watched as he fell sideways out of his seat and crab-crawled in undignified terror backwards on his ass until two of the others helped him up. Eyeing them over disdainfully, Hua Cheng saw that not one of them looked as though they could fight their way out of a wet paper bag, much less give any proper martial god so much as a bruise. He’d known more threatening-looking ghost fires, and the idiots only grew less intimidating when he allowed the full force of his killing intent to wash over them in waves. They whimpered and trembled in the face of his oppressive presence; one of them fell to their knees, their legs simply giving out from fear. He suspected that the only thing stopping them all from pissing themselves was that they were the pretentious, old-fashioned type of gods who stopped maintaining those bodily functions upon ascension, as if such base human activities were beneath them. “So this is Jun Wu’s old guard,” Hua Cheng mused. “It’s a wonder he lasted as long as he did.”
“You–you take that back!” yelped one of the confederates, brandishing an ostentatious, steeply curved dao, stepping shakily out from the pack.
“Please, do your best to make me. I’d love an excuse to kill you; not that I don’t already have one, but His Highness won’t scold me if it’s self-defense.” He thumbed Eming just a hair out of its sheath; it rattled once and then went still, as if it were holding its breath in anticipation. “Go on, then,” he said, stepping forward. “Or is that blade just for show? It’s been so long since Eming got a taste of divine blood. The way you were talking, I would have expected you to jump at the chance to become lucky Number 34.” He paced closer, and the huddled pack of conspirators stepped back. Another step, and the ones at the back of the group were pressed against the wall with nowhere to go.
The one with the dao tried to retreat further only to bump into one of his comrades behind him and awkwardly abort the motion. Hua Cheng continued his advance until the conspirator had to lift their sword out of the way to avoid touching him. He grinned predatorily at the concession and reached up, grabbed the blade between two fingers, and twisted until the steel curled around them; when he let go, its wielder dropped the now-useless weapon to the floor and slunk back among the others with a pathetic yelp.
Did he hear movement in one of the other rooms just then? He couldn’t quite tell over the noise of the fallen sword and the frightened shuffling of the trapped gods, but Hua Cheng thought there was perhaps someone in the entryway. He dismissed it, deciding against sending a butterfly to check; if it was another conspirator late for their meeting, they were welcome to share in their comrades’ fate, and if it was any other god, they knew better than to get in his way. He preferred not to have his attention divided for this.
“If you can’t even take a swing at me, how could you ever hope to challenge His Highness?” he asked, prowling the width of the huddled group and memorizing their faces. If any of them somehow managed to get away unpunished, he would find them, and he would make them wish they had thrown themselves on his blade when they had the chance. “Oh, that’s right. You were hoping that Pei Ming would be your muscle. You do realize how delusional that is, expecting him to aid you in your unjustified and woefully underpowered coup? Do you even know whether Jun Wu wants his old position back? He has had quite the opportunity for self-reflection recently, after all.”
“Of course he does! Why would he just lay down and let some traitor take his rightful place?” someone with more bravery than brains said, although still little enough of both, as they ducked behind their compatriots when Hua Cheng’s gaze turned on them.
“Ah, as I thought, this whole operation is running on assumptions. I’m sure that will work out well for all of you. Well, given that you all seem to be cowards–” he leaned in, smirking as the group cringed away “–I’ll offer you the same terms I gave last time: renounce your divinity, become mortal, and descend, and there’s no need to perish on my blade. See if you can ascend again without a bureaucracy built on your chosen lord’s corruption to support you.”
“You, of all people, dare speak to us of corruption?” The leader finally stumbled out from the rest of the pack. To Hua Cheng’s eye, it looked as though he might have been pushed, but he talked a big game, at least. “We, who have served our lord loyally for centuries?”
“To think that the Heavenly Emperor could curry more injustice than a Ghost King. I must have been slacking,” Hua Cheng taunted. “But really, centuries? And none of you ever garnered enough worship of your own to have even a single Blessings Lantern lit in your name over the years? I guess I wasn’t the only one overindulging in leisure.”
“Fight me, then, if you think you’re so righteous!” the leader shouted, brandishing an ornate double-edged straight sword. “I’m not afraid to die, but I won’t have you cheat, not in front of me and my brothers-in-arms; I know your cursed scimitar does all your fighting for you. If not for your dirty tricks, our lord would never have fallen. Drop it, fight me fairly, and when I win, you and the traitor back off and give our lord his throne back.”
Hua Cheng shrugged. “You’re hardly in a position to make demands,” he said, “but at least this way the match will be slightly more interesting.” He unbelted Eming and, without looking, gave it a spirited toss behind him, putting enough force in the throw to send it clear through the doorway into the other room, where it would be obvious he had no intention of going back on his word. Its landing, rather than the loud clatter he’d expected, sounded unexpectedly muted to his ears, as if it had struck some plush furnishing instead of the tiled flooring he had expected. Ah, well, what did he care if he ruined this trash’s upholstery? “I don’t need a weapon to dispose of you; all it would do is save me dirtying my hands with your blood.”
“You’re disgusting, you know that?” the ringleader snarled, squaring up with Hua Cheng. “But I get it; you’re a ghost, it’s in your nature to be deviant, to find and destroy the good in the world.” He advanced, straight sword aloft, his anger seeming to lend him courage. “What I really can’t stand is that pretender,” he growled, beginning to circle to Hua Cheng’s right, searching for an opening. “Maybe I could accept a change in power eventually if it were a respectable god taking over, someone like Ming Guang, or even Nan Yang; I know no one’s reign lasts forever, but how can anyone expect us to follow the Laughingstock of the Three Realms when the legitimate Emperor still lives, languishing in wrongful imprisonment? That Xie Lian should be thankful! Our lord raised that shameful cur out of the dirt time and again when clearly it was his destiny to wallow in filth.”
Hua Cheng moved just enough to keep the man in sight, blocking him from circling behind him and keeping himself between the man and the door. He could end this with little more than a thought, but this man did not deserve such a clean demise. He watched his adversary’s sloppy footwork and let his form grow sharper and better suited to ripping and tearing.
“Not even when that ungrateful dog attacked him in cold blood did the Emperor, in his infinite mercy, retract his undeserved favor. You called us failures, but what of him?”
Hua Cheng’s tidy manicured nails lengthened and curled into claws and the jingling of his boots was exchanged for the clicking of talons on stone. His lip curled in contempt, revealing fangs as they lengthened in search of blood.
“They may not be wealthy enough to send us Blessings Lanterns, but at least we have real, living human followers and not just some wretched crime-boss ghost throwing his dirty money around to rig the competition for his obscene seduction,” the leader ranted, heedless of the fire he was fueling. “And that failure was so pathetic that he fell for it, too! What kind of base pervert gives up a cultivation of eight centuries for the likes of you, a thing without even a heartbeat to your name, much less a cunt? Is that what he promised you in exchange for helping him with his sedition, or was he just so desperate and inured to shame by then that he’d bed anyone willing to give him the time of day, never mind that it meant bending over for a walking corpse?”
Hua Cheng would give this man what he wanted. He would not use Eming, or his wraith butterflies, or any other weapon against him. He would destroy this filth with his bare hands and count it as a personal failure if any part remained that was recognizable as having once belonged to a human when he was finished. The man again moved towards Hua Cheng’s right, and this time, he allowed it, goading him into seizing his perceived advantage. He made a show of arrogantly letting him creep into his blind spot, but his elongated, mobile ears tracked his movement perfectly.
The ringleader finally caved under the weight of Hua Cheng’s expectations and struck. In the time it took his sword to close the distance between them, Hua Cheng felt that he could have routed an army and performed immaculate last rites for each individual soldier. Instead, in a movement faster than thought, he darted inside the swordsman’s guard and seized him by the shoulders, his curved thumbnails piercing silk and skin to hook securely under his collarbones, the claws of his fingers prying at his shoulder blades. Blood exploded in Hua Cheng’s mouth as he sank his pointed fangs into his throat, and the two of them crashed to the floor together, the god’s pristine sword skittering across the marble as he fell beneath the Ghost King. Hua Cheng reached up and dug the talons of his feet into the god’s abdomen, hooking into the muscle just below the ribs, and pulled, flaying him with one kick, disemboweling him on the second, and scraping clean an empty space bounded by spine and pelvis on the third. By the time Hua Cheng remembered to consider how he ought to draw out this man’s suffering, the floor and nearest wall were spread with a thin coating of what had once been his heart and lungs, among other, less vital necessities. Hua Cheng unclamped his jaw from around the carcass’s throat, stood, and spat out a hunk of muscle and trachea. The hollowed-out top half of the former leader dropped to the floor. Its pelvis and legs were several meters away, exposed bone proving that he hadn’t been entirely spineless after all.
Hua Cheng prowled toward the remaining conspirators, flicking blood out of his claws. They were still huddled in the corner where he had left them, petrified by terror, clearly still processing the results of a fight that had ended in an instant. Some of them appeared to be so out of their minds with fear that they couldn’t even focus on him properly as he approached, staring dazedly somewhere past his waist rather than meeting his eyes. It would have been pitiful, if Hua Cheng had any capacity for pity. He advanced, intending to pull the next conspirator out for processing into a fine red mist.
“You–Your Highness!” one of them suddenly yelped toward the exit.
Hua Cheng's ears flicked toward the sound of a presence near the entrance and he finally turned to look. There in the doorway stood Xie Lian, cradling Eming in his arms.