[Tree] Chapter 662: The Bargain (Patreon)

Although weakened, Yun Zhilan was the only Sovereign in the Sunken Crown Isles, aside from the nightmare monster lurking in the Great Trench. Because of that, people treated her more like a goddess than a person.

It had been many centuries since anyone had tried to bargain with her.

"I promise it isn't a bargain you can ignore," the voices continued despite her silence. There were easily a hundred of them; some were soft and feminine, others were rough and masculine. Each spoke a different language—she even noted a few bestial ones—yet somehow, when they came together, they formed a coherent message she could decipher.

She traced the voice to the skeletal winged Hydra, which was quickly healing by absorbing from its halo of souls. From bloody stumps, new heads formed upon thick necks of decayed flesh. Though it seemed unkillable, she didn't fear this monster. Yet, the name Moros kept whispering in the back of her head, making her hair stand on end.

"Besides those souls you're holding, you have little to bargain with."

It stared up at her, yet its mouth never moved as the same overlapping voices spoke to her again.

"Morthex isn't one for conversation." A large ship made of black rock briefly faded into view in the deep ocean between them. Through a translucent aether shield, she noted it was topped with white trees whose leaves shimmered like starlight. A single void-black tree at the center of the airship glowed with divine energy, and Yun Zhilan felt it look at her. "I speak to you telepathically through one of my ships." The ship then disappeared again as if it were a figment of her imagination.

"What are you?" Her eyes narrowed. "Few communicate using the dead. Are you an Archdemon? A Dark God? Or perhaps a death affinity Sovereign from the mainland sent to kill me?"

"I'm your savior," the voices replied. "I know it sounds unbelievable, but if you agree to my bargain, I can cleanse you of Uldrenneth's blood and your heart demons."

Yun Zhilan's fingers traced the bulging black lines on her neck, and a sad chuckle escaped her lips. "Such a miracle can't come cheap, and a bargain goes two ways. What is it you need from me?"

"To back off and free Uldrenneth—"

"No," Yun Zhilan said adamantly, shaking her head. "I won't weaken the seal and let Uldrenneth out. Not until I reach the ninth wave of my domain and finish him for good."

"Pushing yourself that far will cause your soul to collapse," the voices warned.

"That's fine," she muttered, glancing at the people on the shore who had stood by her side, sacrificing their own Qi for centuries to keep her alive. "I assured them I could defeat Uldrenneth. But the truth is, the only way I can kill Uldrenneth for good in my current state is if I dive into the Great Trench and go supernova."

A pause followed, then another violent shake as Uldrenneth banged against the seal. It wouldn't last until the morning.

"There's no need for you to sacrifice yourself," the voices assured her. "Leave Uldrenneth to me."

Yun Zhilan exhaled softly. "Sorry, but I will have to decline. I've let too many people die who believed in my lies. I'm not about to let the nightmare free because a voice in my head whispers sweet promises to me."

"Then allow me to extend my apologies as well, as you have left me with no choice," the voices said, and withdrew from her mind. The black stone ship materialized again, this time directly over the Great Trench.

They aren't going to try and break my seal, are they? Even for a Sovereign, that would take hours and far more Qi than it's worth. She bit her lip. Unless it's someone from a higher layer, but that's not possible outside an Era of Ascension.

That left two possibilities. Someone had summoned an Archdemon, or a Dark God had taken an interest in freeing Uldrenneth. Neither was an outcome she could stomach.

A desolation portal tore open beside the ship, and the ocean became impossibly bright as a living sun poured out and settled onto the trench's seal. Yun Zhilan raised a hand and narrowed her eyes to avoid being blinded.

What is that?!

"Matriarch! Was that you?" one of her Elders shouted from the shore. Her other Elders, holding off the angered members of the destroyed Drowned Bell Sect, all stopped to cover their faces.

"Don't worry, I've got it under control," she lied and dove down toward the light. As she got closer, she noticed it wasn't a living sun, but rather a giant slime made of pure divine energy. Its body was immense, spread across the Great Trench's seal like a writhing mass.

"Domain of the All-Devourer," an oddly childlike voice came from the slime, and Yun Zhilan felt a terrible pull on herself and the ocean from the moment it activated.

The golden slime rapidly expanded and began swallowing the darkness covering the Ninth Wave seal, turning black as it sank deeper into the Great Trench.

I need to stop it! Yun Zhilan mobilized the ocean into an obscenely strong undercurrent to pry the slime off. She felt the black veins on her neck pound angrily as she drew on her Qi, and the ocean answered her over the slime. It roared around her, and the slime's outer tendrils came free from the seal like grass caught in a fierce wind. Good, just a little more and the whole thing will be off—

Moros, Moros, Moros.

Yun Zhilan glanced at where the Hydra had been and realized both the monster and the ship were missing. She had been so focused on the golden slime that she had lost track of them.

Looking up, she found Morthex instantly. The skeletal Hydra was back to lurking beneath the Ninth Wave Sect island. The ship revealed itself a moment later between them, clearly in combat mode. Multiple layers of shields covered it this time, and massive flowers on the ship's sides swiveled toward her, curling their petals to form a cannon barrel. Yun Zhilan's eyes widened as she saw balls of indescribable darkness forming within their folds.

It can command the void? She didn't know that was possible, yet this ship proved the impossible as it launched a volley of void directly at her. She had never experienced a silent attack underwater before. The ocean was her weapon, her shield, and an extension of herself. She had only lost track of Morthex because she hadn't deemed the monster as important as the slime or the seal.

Yet she stared down this volley, and the ocean told her nothing as the void simply erased whatever it touched before it could whisper.

She clenched her fist, and the half mile of ocean above her solidified. Her Lunar Qi swept through, partially freezing the pressurized ocean into ice crystals. She'd used this defense to block Uldrenneth before. Yet, the void balls bored through it anyway, leaving perfectly round tunnels in their wake. They shrank with every hundred meters they traveled, until the last of them fizzled out a few meters from her face.

"Was that a vain attempt to threaten me?" she yelled, letting the sea carry her voice to the ship. "I may be injured and planning to die today, but I'm still a Sovereign!"

She didn't wait for the ship to answer.

Down in the trench, the massive undercurrent she'd set upon her seal kept churning, tearing at the slime clinging to the Great Trench. She didn't let it slacken for even a moment. Instead, she split her will and ripped the sand loose from the seabed. It rose in a roaring column, spinning tighter and faster. She parted the half mile of frozen ocean and hurled the vortex up through the gap toward the airship.

The ship's outline wavered like a reflection in rippling water. It was slipping back to wherever it had been hiding.

Oh no, you don't.

Yun Zhilan thrust out her hand. Her Sovereign spiritual pressure lashed upward like a claw, latching onto the ship. Its shields flared angrily as the sand vortex struck, grinding against the outermost layer. Just as she peeled away the first layer of shields with her spiritual pressure, the tree in the middle flared with power, and another layer of shields formed.

How much Qi are they willing to waste to save a single ship? Yun Zhilan tightened her spiritual pressure, even as she felt Uldrenneth's blood crawling across her face toward her working eye and licking the edges of her skull. The ship's shields simply doubled in thickness as it remained shrouded in sand.

I'd crush it easily with the fourth wave from my domain, but the Ninth Wave Sect lies behind it, and the island's defensive formations wouldn't survive the impact. She grimaced. My will is also spread thin between managing the seal, the undercurrent, the vortex, and my spiritual pressure.  

Black blood trailed from her nose and the corner of her mouth.

I hate how weak I've become.

Releasing the sand vortex and her spiritual pressure gripping the airship, she focused all her efforts on what truly mattered.

The moment Uldrenneth breaks through, I need my domain's ninth wave prepped to temporarily seal him and me inside the Great Trench. Only a wave of that strength will hold him long enough for me to go supernova and prevent the explosion from wiping out the Sunken Crown Isles and all my efforts.

She raised her hand.

"Bestow upon me the might of the fourth wave."

Her two affinities, Water and Lunar, worked in tandem to birth a wave that dwarfed the previous three. It climbed higher and faster than any before it, and after a full circle of her Inner World, it was ready. She pointed at the darkened slime that dared to eat away at her seal.

"Fourth wave, release."

The wave detonated from her Inner World with such force that it flattened the slime against the seal and punched an island-sized hole through its middle.

Not enough.

"Bestow upon me—" She doubled over and projectile vomited black blood. Her throat burned as she clawed at the finger-thick black veins bulging on her neck. No... already? She could feel the monster's blood leaking into her Soul Cosmos and working eye, darkening her vision and corrupting her Qi. "Heavens," she begged, "bestow upon me the might of the fifth wave!"

The ocean poured into her Inner World for the fifth time, tearing wider gaps in her Soul Cosmos and letting more Uldrenneth blood infect her soul. At this level of infection, even centuries in the soul-cleansing formation would be useless.

Not caring, since she didn't plan to live beyond today, she let the wave thunder through her Inner World, and she felt her entire Soul Cosmos tremble from its might as it was almost double the size of the fourth.

"You're too late," the hundred voices said. "So don't go releasing that fifth wave. Save it for what comes after."

"What—"

The ship materialized above the seal and unleashed a volley of void into it. What was left of the slime dug its tendrils into the seal and tore it open. Yun Zhilan froze in terror, staring down into the abyss and meeting Uldrenneth's crystal-blue eye. As if announcing his freedom, his heartbeat pulsed out of the gap.

Monsters swarmed out of the gap and ignored the ship. They were doing everything they could to flee the Sovereign monster lurking deep in the abyss. Usually, she let out a controlled few, but this swarm would overwhelm the islands within hours.

Assuming there were islands left after Uldrenneth was done.

"What have you done?" Yun Zhilan cursed as one of Uldrenneth's tentacles erupted from the hole after the fleeing monsters, catching hundreds with sharp teeth. She summoned a shield from her spatial ring and tried to block it, but the wind was knocked out of her as she spiraled through the ocean and slammed into the stump of the destroyed Drowned Bell Sect's island.

Ugh, Yun Zhilan coughed up more blood as she pulled herself out of the rock. Just as I thought, he's grown stronger in our three hundred years apart.

A single tendril, a mile thick, stood alone in the ocean like a living tree, with half-dead monsters skewered on its spiked branches and shrouded in a red haze. Its prize? The skeletal winged Hydra and its orbiting souls.

She looked up at the surface and saw the cost. Half of the Ninth Wave Sect's island had crumbled into the ocean, falling like a dense hail of rock. Among the wreckage, she saw crushed corpses, pieces of homes, sprinkled with fragments of green jade from the Jade Emperor's Consortium's outpost.

Without the Consortium's connection to the mainland branches, all hope left Yun Zhilan.

She was the only one left to seal this nightmare, and she was only on the fifth wave.

The seal broke further, and more tendrils poured out, aiming for the fleeing monsters and her island. Uldrenneth was intelligent and knew she had stuck around all these years to protect her home. Like a spider emerging from an egg, the nightmarish creature heaved its immense body out of the Great Trench, shattering what was left of the seal.

Uldrenneth's crystal-blue eye swiveled and stopped when it located her.

"Yun Zhilan," his voice thundered through the deep. "What a shame." His immense form, more tendrils than body, rose from the Great Trench. "I thought you would put up more of a fight to prevent my escape, but it seems I expected too much. How boring."

She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, but said nothing. Her plan had been suicidal and optimistic from the start, but the owner of the voices had taken her chance away from her. Now Uldrenneth was free.

Moros, Moros, Moros...

That same name from before began whispering in the back of her mind again, and it seemed to grow loud enough that even Uldrenneth noticed. The living nightmare's eye swiveled around, as if searching for the source.

"Yun Zhilan, I've come again, not to bargain, but to ask for your aid," the voices said.

"Oh, have you now?" Yun Zhilan hissed through clenched teeth. "And why the hell should I help you?"

"Because we share the same goal."

"Which is?"

"To kill Uldrenneth."

Yun Zhilan glanced between the broken seal and the living nightmare about to take a bite out of her sect's island, struggling to follow the logic.

"First you free him, and now you want to kill him?" She almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. "You're not making any sense."

"It's easier to shoot him this way."

Yun Zhilan was about to ask what they meant—only for the ocean's whispers to alert her and Uldrenneth of incoming danger a second before it struck, giving the monster time to put one of its thicker tendrils between itself and a beam of concentrated desolation that tore through the ocean. Uldrenneth roared in pain as the beam melted through its tendril and tore into its body. The beam kept going for a full minute. Yun Zhilan just watched in silent shock while Uldrenneth desperately sacrificed tendrils to block the beam. Black blood as thick as tar shrouded the monster once the beam finally stopped. Nothing moved for a breath, but Yun Zhilan knew deep down.

That wasn't enough to kill Uldrenneth.

A pained growl came from the monster as a tendril whipped out of the black, aiming for Yun Zhilan. She pulled herself out of the way just in time as the rock behind her exploded from the force.

Definitely a mid-stage Sovereign now. Yun Zhilan grimaced. If that desolation beam hadn't finished him off, what was her fifth wave supposed to do?

"So, do we have a deal?" the voices asked.

"I don't see what you need me for, but fine," she snapped back. "I'll work with you."

"Good. Do everything you can besides dying to keep Uldrenneth busy for a short time."

"Why? Are you going to fire another one of those beams?" Yun Zhilan asked, while ignoring the fact that it had originated from the treasure realm. That would be a question for later.

"No, I can't unleash an attack like that again for a while," the voices admitted.

Yun Zhilan narrowed her eyes. "Then how are you planning to kill Uldrenneth if your strongest technique couldn't?"

"I won't be the one to strike him down."

"Then who will be?!"

"My daughter," the voices said. "She's on her way."