[Tree] Chapter 661: The Lying Sovereign (Patreon)

Even after three centuries, Yun Zhilan never stopped counting Uldrenneth's heartbeats. It was a borderline obsession, and the worst part was that she couldn't explain to those around her why, because that would expose the truth.

It wasn't a question of whether Uldrenneth would surface again—it was rather a question of when.

Yun Zhilan opened her eyes, and a sense of dread washed over her. Uldrenneth's heartbeat had come a moment too early, and she alone knew what that meant.

The bile around her was black and thick like tar. She rose out of it, the soul-cleansing formation's hold on the Uldrenneth blood in her system loosening.

"Matriarch!" One of the ten Elders feeding the palace-sized formation paled. "The Red Moon has yet to rise. Leaving now will worsen your condition!"

Yun Zhilan gave the Elder a sad smile. "Worsening it further won't matter. Not today, at least."

"What do you mean—" the Elder began, but a shockwave hit the palace, making the black bile ripple around her. Defensive formations flared, and distant bells began to ring.

"He's awake," Yun Zhilan said, fully stepping out of the bile. Her spatial ring flashed, clothing her in an instant as she exited the room. The Elders chased after her, begging her to return to the pool while the palace continued to tremble. They spouted nonsense about the Red Moon not yet rising, and that Uldrenneth could not rise.

Yun Zhilan pitied them. They had spent three centuries caring for her and believed her lies wholeheartedly.

"Stand back, all of you," she commanded the Elders as she stepped out onto the harbor and peered down into the ocean's depths.

The seal is indeed breaking, as I feared.

During their fight 300 years ago, Yun Zhilan had managed to summon the final wave of her Ninth Wave Domain. Knowing it wouldn't be enough to kill Uldrenneth, she sacrificed her infant soul to ensure the wave would become a permanent part of reality. She could still hear the roar as the towering ninth wave crashed down upon Uldrenneth, sealing him in the Great Trench.

For a Monarch, that would have been their end.

But Uldrenneth was both a fellow Sovereign and terribly persistent. He was a creature of nightmares that Yun Zhilan could only contain, not kill.

The day I've been dreading for three hundred years is here. She sighed softly. The day Uldrenneth awakens, and my lies are exposed.

Uldrenneth's heartbeat had always been so slow and consistent that the cultivators of the isles used it as a clock. Sealing him should have dampened the heartbeat, yet it remained the same intensity. Only Yun Zhilan knew the truth. The heartbeat was actually Uldrenneth slamming against the seal in a slow rhythm, weakening it with every strike.

Even so, the seal should have held for centuries more. It was part of reality now, and the ocean itself fed it, mending a little of the damage after every strike.

That had changed with the appearance of the treasure realm. It was as if a plug had been opened at the bottom of the ocean, drawing in all the surrounding Qi and weakening her seal in the process. Uldrenneth's strikes grew stronger, and the seal thinned faster than ever.

The Red Tide had changed too, though everyone forgot how they used to be as the centuries passed. Long before her battle, the night of the red moon had sent the Great Trench's monsters fleeing to the surface as Uldrenneth stirred below. Her seal should have ended the Red Tide forever. But as the years went on, Yun Zhilan realized the seal trapped the monsters inside the trench, giving Uldrenneth an endless food supply to speed up his recovery.

So whenever the moon turned red, Yun Zhilan briefly relaxed the ninth-wave seal and let the monsters flee, just as they always had. The Red Tide came on the same nights it always did, and nobody realized it now came at her command. When people asked why she never chased Uldrenneth down into the trench, she told them of a veil that only weakened beneath the red moon.

The Drowned Bell Sect made the rest easy. They had been extorting the isles with their bell since before her battle, and once it was over, they loudly claimed to have summoned Uldrenneth by silencing it. Yun Zhilan never corrected them. She even publicly agreed their bell was effective, despite knowing it was nothing but a corroded relic dredged up from the seabed.

The Drowned Bell Sect never questioned why she vouched for them, and they gladly accepted it. As long as the isles believed a bell kept Uldrenneth asleep, nobody would ask what was truly holding him down there.

All those deaths I caused by releasing those monsters ended up amounting to nothing. She traced her fingers along the bulging black veins on her face. I did it to deprive Uldrenneth of food. To slow his recovery and prevent him from growing stronger. Her eyes flickered to the jade tower. I also secretly sold the monster corpses to the Jade Emperor's Consortium to fund the construction of my Soul Clensing formation and extend my life.

The Sunken Crown Isles should have been abandoned long ago, but her presence and stories gave everyone the confidence to stay.

A bitter laugh escaped her lips.

The worst part is that my actions didn't match my heart. I drove Uldrenneth back to save my home, and I knew that I alone had the strength to save these islands from his wrath a second time. Her hand rested on her chest. But the lies and the deaths I caused in pursuit of my recovery made my heart demons fester, which slowed my recovery and started a vicious cycle fueled by guilt.

None of this was a new epiphany to her—with little to do besides counting Uldrenneth's 'heartbeats' while floating in a vile tank of her own expelled impurities, she had a lot of time for self-reflection and self-hatred.

"Sovereign Yun!"

Yun Zhilan's gaze shifted away from the Great Trench to someone who no longer concerned her.

"Not now, Branch Manager," she said softly, the ocean breeze carrying her words to a wealthy-looking man draped in green-and-gold silks, hurrying along the coastal road leading to the Jade Emperor's Consortium outpost on the island's northern side.

"Not now?!" the man yelled, his voice booming across the harbor. He clutched a communication jade in one hand, his Nascent Soul Realm cultivation on full display. "Care to explain why shockwaves are assaulting our island and my communication array has been damaged, Sovereign Yun? You assured me—"

"Not now," Yun Zhilan repeated. "Go back inside, Branch Manager. Unless you want to assist me in fighting back a hungry Uldrenneth?"

He opened his mouth to argue, then looked at her throat, where the black lines had begun to angrily pulse, and closed it again. With an annoyed expression, he hurried back the way he had come.

Yun Zhilan returned her focus to the ocean, and now that she wasn't casting her senses deep into the Great Trench, her spiritual senses picked up on something far closer, moving beneath the island. A vortex of monsters and lost souls, and at its center was a massive Hydra with skeletal wings and six heads.

Huh?

It took a lot to surprise Yun Zhilan, but in her long life, she'd never seen such a bizarre monster.

Death affinity and in the mid-stages of the Monarch Realm? I'd know of such a terrifying monster lurking in these waters... unless it came from the Great Trench. Yun Zhilan regained her composure. Whether this monster is the child of Uldrenneth or simply passing through, it does not matter. I can make use of its presence to fuel my waves.

Opening her arms, she called out to the heavens.

"Domain of the ninth wave, heed my call."

The ocean obeyed its Sovereign. As if taking a deep breath, all the fog blanketing the islands and all the rolling waves across the ocean's surface were pulled into Yun Zhilan's barren Inner World and forcefully condensed into a single rising wave that grew in size and strength as it was pulled across the surface of her Inner World by her Lunar affinity.

Once it had completed a full rotation, it was ready for release.

But Yun Zhilan noticed something strange. Ever since Uldrenneth's blood poisoned her and entered her Inner World, she had been more careful about inspecting the affinities that made up her wave.

Is that desolation Qi?

She used her Lunar Qi to isolate it from the rising wave and found that, despite being a Sovereign, she couldn't perceive all the Laws and Daos laid within the desolation. It was also almost impossible to restrain, even within her own Inner World.

Fascinating, Yun Zhilan thought, and fed it back into the wave. She would figure out where it came from in a moment, but for now, she would make use of it against the Hydra.

As the wave completed its circuit around her Inner World, she deliberately ignored the Uldrenneth blood, using the opportunity to spread deeper into her body, and pointed toward the Hydra.

"First wave, release."

The roaring wave in her Inner World, capable of swallowing a city, materialized beneath her in an instant. The ocean's surface remained deceptively calm, hiding a Sovereign-empowered wall of water crashing down like a mountain. The Elders waiting on the shores of the Ninth Wave Island felt the impact through their feet as the entire island trembled violently.

Yun Zhilan watched as her released wave hit the vortex, sending the monsters and souls scattering. The Hydra couldn't resist; the first wave proved too powerful, slamming the beast into the seabed with enough force to trigger a localized earthquake and throw up a dense cloud of sand.

It's surprisingly not dead yet. Yun Zhilan raised her hand to the heavens once again. "Bestow upon me the might of the second wave."

The ocean answered her call. For the first wave, she had fueled it with fog and waves. This time, she drew in enough ocean to drop the localized sea level by dozens of meters, exposing the underwater shelf of all the Sunken Crown Isles to the moonlight.

"Matriarch!" an Elder shouted from the shore. "Please stop this madness! You're going to ruin yourself by the fifth wave!"

"I'm fine," Yun Zhilan lied, wiping away a trail of black blood leaking from her nose. In truth, even reaching the fifth wave was a stretch. But she had no choice. Anything short of the ninth wave would do nothing against Uldrenneth.

I need to infuse my waves with the Qi from those lingering souls to offset how much water I have to gather. Yun Zhilan reached out to them, yet no matter how hard she tried to draw them in, they refused to leave the ocean. From the cloud of sand, the Hydra she had blasted rose, and the lingering souls returned to orbit it.

How is that possible? A Monarch monster has greater command over souls than a Sovereign?

The second wave roared around her Inner World, carrying enough water to drown a mountain.

No matter. They will be freed when the Hydra dies.

Yun Zhilan remained standing in the air, high above the bowl of missing ocean water.

"Second wave, release."

This time, the summoned wave crashed down upon the ocean, sending up a surge that smacked against the Ninth Wave Island coastline. Yun Zhilan didn't mind—her Elders would make sure the island survived. Her focus was entirely on the Hydra, which ate the wall of water for a second time and still didn't die.

It floated out of the sandstorm, injured but alive. It drew in some lingering souls, and Yun Zhilan watched as its decayed flesh reformed and skeletal wings fused back together.

Yun Zhilan had seen soul-devouring monsters before. What she hadn't witnessed was a monster that could heal from absorbed souls—let alone this quickly.

It used around five souls to heal the damage from my second wave. Yun Zhilan grimaced as she counted the hundreds it had captured. I'll need to kill it in one shot, and for that, I'll need more than water.

Her tranquil gaze settled on the Drowned Bell Sect's island nearby.

"Matriarch!" all her Elders yelled at once, likely guessing what she was about to do.

"I never really liked the sound of that bell anyway." She simply raised her hand, and the ocean understood her intentions. "Gift upon me the might of the third wave."

A loud crack echoed through the Sunken Crown Isles as the Drowned Bell Sect's island split in two. Water exploded from the wound and pierced the clouds as the island's two halves crumbled into the ocean far below. Those that could fly fled into the sky like displaced birds, while the blood and flesh of the weaklings flowed into her Inner World and fed her third wave.

Some of her loyal Elders rushed into the air above her to block the understandably enraged Patriarch and Elders of the Drowned Bell Sect. Yun Zhilan ignored their cries of murder. She had already caused thousands to die over the years. What were a few more? In the end, all that mattered was whether she could kill Uldrenneth, even if she died in the process. Only with that monster's death could her soul rest easy in the afterlife.

Yun Zhilan pointed her finger at the defiant Hydra.

"Third wave, release."

A wave, three times bigger than the first, carrying the weight of an island and its dead, slammed into the ocean like a fallen meteor. It crushed the Hydra like a bug underfoot against the seabed of the Great Trench that had entombed Uldrenneth for three hundred years.

Yun Zhilan doubled over as she hurled up a mouthful of black blood. The veins on her neck bulged aggressively like leeches trying to break her skin, and the vision in her left eye was entirely gone.

But at least the Hydra was finally dead.

She reached out to claim the lingering souls.

They refused.

"No..." she whispered. She tried again, straining her Soul Cosmos, but the souls remained firmly within the ocean. Then they began to fall like snow into the sand as if drawn to something. "No. It's not possible..."

The tips of fractured skeletal wings peeked out of the sand, followed by a single surviving head glaring up at her with empty eyes.

Moros, Moros, Moros...

A single name began to chant in the back of her head, and a sense of dread overcame her. Her heart beat louder, and the corrupted Uldrenneth blood roared in her ears.

Something from deep in the ocean reached out to her, and perhaps against her better judgment, she let it in.

A hundred overlapping voices whispered into her mind at once.

"Yun Zhilan, I wish to bargain."