Heaven's Blade
738 Words
Chapter 10: Heaven’s Blade***
Heaven didn’t knock twice.
The blade came at midnight. Not through the door. Through the sky.
Li Chen felt it first. His new meridian went cold, then white-hot, like it was trying to tear itself out of his body. He sat up choking. The room was dark. Xie Wuchen was gone.
The bed was empty. The window was open.
“Wuchen?” His voice cracked.
No answer. Only the wind. And in the wind, metal. Singing.
Li Chen stumbled to the window. His legs almost didn’t hold. Outside, the courtyard was silver. Frost grew in spirals across the dead grass, racing outward from a single point.
Xie Wuchen stood in the center. Alone. Head tilted back, watching the sky.
Something was falling.
Not a star. Stars didn’t scream.
It was a sword. Forty feet long. Made of light and judgment. Heaven’s Blade. The kind they used to cut mountains in half when mountains disobeyed.
It was aimed at the palace. At them.
“Xie Wuchen!” Li Chen shouted. His voice broke the night. “Move!”
He didn’t. He just stood there, white hair streaming up like he was underwater. Waiting.
The blade hit.
It didn’t touch the ground. It hit Xie Wuchen’s raised hand.
The sound wasn’t sound. It was pressure. It flattened the pear tree. It blew out every window in Black Lotus Palace. It drove Li Chen to his knees, hands over his ears, blood running from his nose.
When he could see again, Xie Wuchen was still standing.
He was holding the sky up.
The blade, thirty feet of solid divine law, rested on his palm. His arm didn’t shake. But his face—
His face was breaking. Not physically. Just... everything he’d locked away for three hundred years was right there. Rage. Grief. Fear. All of it, bared to Heaven.
“Is this it?” Xie Wuchen asked the sky. Quiet. The courtyard heard him anyway. “Is this all you have?”
The blade pressed down. The ground under his feet cracked. Ice spiderwebbed out from his boots, then turned black.
Li Chen tried to stand. Couldn’t. His first meridian was seizing, reacting to the divine qi. “Stop,” he gasped. “You’ll—”
“I won’t,” Xie Wuchen cut in. Eyes never leaving the sky. “I told you. I’m not asking permission anymore.”
The blade flared. Poured light into him. Trying to burn him out from the inside. Xie Wuchen’s robes caught. His skin smoked. He didn’t let go.
“You took him once!” he roared. Finally loud. Finally alive. “You don’t get him again!”
Li Chen crawled. Dragged himself across glass and ice. Had to get there. Had to—
The ninth bud on the pear tree burst open. All at once. Not natural. Forced. A white blossom, perfect, screaming against the light.
Xie Wuchen saw it. From the corner of his eye.
He smiled. Bloody. Broken.
Then he closed his hand.
The blade shattered.
Not like the Enforcer’s sword. This was louder. This was Heaven itself taking a wound. Light exploded outward, then imploded. The backlash hit the clouds and shredded them. For ten miles, the frozen realm saw stars for the first time in three centuries.
Silence fell.
Xie Wuchen dropped to one knee. Just one. He stayed upright. Barely. His right hand was gone to the wrist. Not bleeding. Just... gone. Eaten by light.
Li Chen reached him. Collapsed against him. “i***t,” he sobbed. “You i***t, why—”
Xie Wuchen used his left hand. Touched Li Chen’s hair. Tied something in.
The ninth knot. Red thread. Already there. Like he’d prepared it.
“Nine,” Xie Wuchen rasped. “You live nine days, I keep you nine lifetimes.”
His eyes closed. He fell. Not gracefully. Just down, into Li Chen’s arms. Heavy. Cold. Breathing.
Above them, the sky was empty. No more swords. No more voices. Heaven had gone quiet.
For now.
Li Chen held him. Looked at the stump of his wrist. At the nine knots in white hair. At the single blooming pear blossom that refused to freeze.
“Wuchen,” he whispered. “Wake up. You owe me a second meridian.”
No answer. But his chest moved. Up. Down.
Alive.
And for the first time since Bai Ze died, the Demon Realm felt warm.
- Writer
