Chapter 583 - Dreadline (II)

It wasn't a difficult decision to make, in the end.

My trust in the kids has never been just a lip service. Even if I have my hang-ups with them and some of the choices they make, I do trust them with all my heart, and I trust in their ability and desire to endure.

Though Wan Lan's Bloodline has always been somewhere in my thoughts, I never attached much attention to it for the simple reason of, well, not knowing what to do with it. The initial window never gave a hint as to how to unlock it, and it has not changed since then. I genuinely figured I'd first have to get to the Upper Realm and go join a big ol' library or something to find some clues.

But... well, here we are.

I took out the talisman that had been gathering dust in one or another spatial ring for years now and rippled it. A rather thin array of light shot forth in a captivating arch, latching onto the eye at the center of the chains.

Not a breath later, the world came to a standstill--a literal one. I felt the feeling of abject dread overcome me from within my soul, and a desire to just end it all nearly take hold of me.

I shot to my feet and looked around, worried to my bones--luckily, Long Tao, Rayce, and Light had seemingly managed to reach the rest and stop them.

The world became a desolate mural of gloom, with colors dulling and desaturating, and the sky turning overcast. It was as though someone put on a blue filter over everything, setting up the scene for some low-budget artsy movie.

But the dread did not go away, continuing to gnaw.

**

Wan Lan's vision shifted and the world changed.

From the shadows she emerged onto a vast plain, ashen and enshadowed, with soot and smoke visible in every direction. Everywhere she looked, there were mounds of the corpses, and in-between them heaps of weapons sticking out of the dirt like blades of grass.

She could not quite figure out where any light was coming from, as the sky was almost ink-black in its hue. But she could see--everything.

Bit by bit, she levitated upwards until she stood about a hundred yards above, looming over the landscape of death.

A sound jostled her awake as she looked up--in front of her, some ten feet away or so, floated a young man cloaked in a black robe.

He looked to be just a few years older than her, in his mid-twenties at most. His skin was so pale that he looked more dead than alive; there was no color to either his lips or his cheeks, and his illuminatingly blue eyes looked deeply lifeless. Perhaps the only color besides them on him was his hair--it reached the length of his shoulder and was a strange mix of golden and silver. Neither, yet both.

The air around him was thick with an indescribable sensation, one that she occasionally felt swell up in her--in those moments during battles of carnage, when she found herself attracted to the crimson rivers, she would feel it. Swelling within her.

Though she wanted to move, to run away, she couldn't. She felt pinned to the point, the world around her akin to a crushing mountain pressing into her.

He floated over towards her and extended his hand, lifting her chin up and staring into her eyes.

Terror. That was what she felt. Terror from the depths of her soul.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asked, his voice low and droning, as though aged rather than youthful.

"..." she barely gathered enough strength to node, let alone speak.

"Good," he smiled, revealing two rows of unnaturally white teeth. "To command dread, you first must devour fear, child."

"..."

"Humans... we are unordinary creatures in so many ways," he continued, letting go of her and turning away, looking down at the wasteland of anguish and sorrow. "We can feel so many things. Joy. Love. Hate. Anger. Desperation. Desire. Disgust. Fear. Horror. But every emotion itself is a spectrum," he lifted his arm and drew a line with his finger--a line remained in the air, thick and black, wiggling like smoke and shadows yet never tearing apart. "There is no one state for it. All our lives, we struggle to command them, to understand them, to bend them to our will.

"Like those Buddhists who try to eliminate them. Or those Purists who try to indulge in them. But my path... my path is a bit different," he turned back towards her and smiled yet again. "In the early days of humanity, before grand kingdoms spanning continents were built, and before the humans came to dominate the world, I was born. My mother loathed me, as she had to feed me. My first memory of fear was when I was only three--I took too large of a bite of the bread, and she palmed a rock and slammed it into my face. That sensation of your heart stopping, of your mind being overcome, of the very blood in your veins freezing... it was exhilarating."

He chuckled rather oddly as he paused. Wan Lan did not know what was happening or why--was this her Inner Demon? Was she supposed to defeat him in order to have a clean breakthrough?

"There has never been another Emperor of Dread besides me, child," he suddenly continued. "Because no other human has managed to become Dread. Even if they had the desire, they did not have the body. Like all human emotions, dread does not exist in isolation. You will hear them say, 'That is dreadful!', and you will hear them say, 'Live in dread', or even 'Filled with dread'. But the true dread... it paralyzes. It breaks. It renders the mind silent, bereft of all thoughts.

"You only have one path toward that Coronation, child, and it resides within my blood in you. I had never thought I would get to meet any of my future descendants, but... I had also never thought a man like your Master would exist. I had no master--just a slew of old men and women who wished to command me as a weapon. To them, I was no different than a sword or a bow.

"There shall be no stories or records of me. I lived and died long before your world became what it is, and I seldom left a mark. Dread is a weapon, child, but it is still merely a human emotion. It builds as well as it destroys. You have the body, you have the heart, and you have the mind for it--only your soul remains. The first chain shall be removed; over the next month, you will have to overcome it. The first of the seven steps toward the true dread--Disquiet. Each chain will reshape your soul, slowly but surely, until it is ready to command Dread.

"I regret, now, leaving so little of myself in the remnant will. Had I known I would have met you and that man... alas, the dead cannot bear regrets. Humanity came to me shortly before my death, and he asked me to stay. That the Purities needed help, for the world was slowly rotting. Cycle after cycle. Life after life. Forward the words to your Master, child: I had met him, the one who would one day command the Court. And he was a coward who begged me to spare him. But he was not alone.

"Dao faces more than one end. I just hope... you few are enough to stop them."