The man, brimming with an ancient light, stood before them. His confidence wasn't arrogant, but was innate, like the sun's certainty that it will rise. He looked at the four of them, his expression one of pure, unadulterated amusement.
Yisha was the first to find her voice, sizing him up with a mixture of awe and deep confusion, yet something about him felt oddly familiar. He wasn't a demon. He wasn't a cultivator. He was something else entirely, something that made the air around him feel sanctified. Is he…like us?
"You... know who we are?" she asked, her usual bravado tempered by the sheer scale of the power before her.
The god's smile was a flash of perfect white. "Nà dāngrán," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in all the realms. Of course.
He then gave a slight, almost theatrical bow, more a tilt of his head and shoulders, his long, night-black hair shifting like a silk curtain.
"This one is Wù Fēng," he introduced, his voice a warm, resonant, deep for someone who looked so young and seemed so carefree. "A humble wanderer of the endless skies, and it seems...a timely admirer of your work."
His gaze swept over the unconscious dark cultivators and the dissipating crimson energy. "Though I must say, your choice of taverns leaves much to be desired. The ambiance is... draining. Your last pick was much better."
He straightened up, his eyes twinkling as they landed on Yisha, then Qiānyí, then Yisha again, lingering, but not too long.
"It's not every era that one finds two nascent goddesses and a legendary frost fox, all keeping such... interesting company." Then his eyes finally rested on Xuán Chè, seeing the hidden weight of the jade pendant and the sleeping power within. "The stories are already writing themselves."
As if his presence alone commanded the heavens, the oppressive crimson shroud began to dissipate, vaporizing to reveal the breathtaking, golden light of a setting sun. It was the first true beauty they had seen in this blighted place.
"But no time to waste," Wù Fēng said, his tone shifting to one of gentle urgency as he turned to Qiānyí. "I'm sure you've sensed it. This earth is not sleeping. It is dead."
Still metaphorically scratching her head in confusion, she simply nodded, her mind utterly captivated by the problem.
"Would you like to learn how to save it?"
The question hung in the air. Qiānyí's confusion was instantly eclipsed by a surge of pure, unadulterated excitement. This was the key to everything she was.
"Tā...yes! Yes, I would!"
"Excellent!" Wù Fēng beamed, clapping his hands together softly. "Just acknowledge me as your sifu, and we can get started on your first lessons of ascending to godhood."
"I'm sorry, what?"
"Yes, sifu," he repeated, as if correcting a minor pronunciation error. "To be quite honest, I have never had disciples before. So gaining four at once is quite fortuitous!"
He looked at their four utterly dumbfounded faces with unshakable delight, completely serious.
"Though you do not seem to be an enemy, we do not know you," Li Wei interrupted the silence of overthinking.
"Yeah, we know your name but we do not know you," Yisha agreed.
Wù Fēng scratched his chin in contemplation. "You have a valid point," he conceded, his gaze sweeping over the four of them. "How about this. I will teach you how to save this land, free of charge. And after you see the result, you will take me as your sifu. Do we have a deal?"
He turned his full attention back to Yisha, his eyes holding a depth that seemed to see the very fractures in her spirit. Then he looked to Qiānyí once more.
"You draw strength from the earth, feel its sickness as a poison in your own veins, do you not? The Blight is a curse that rejects healing by traditional means. It needs you. I can teach you to understand that rejection, and how to overcome it."
Qiānyí's breath hitched. He had put words to a sensation that had haunted her since they first set foot in Ān Zhèn. Her mind struggled with a desperate, burgeoning hope. To heal the land was her deepest desire, the purest purpose she could conceive.
"Well, this sounds wonderful, Senior," she said, her voice carefully measured. "But a student must trust her master. How can we trust you?"
Before Wù Fēng could answer, a low, resonant voice cut through the tension.
"I will agree."
All eyes turned to Xuán Chè. He had been silently watching and listening. His hand unconsciously closed around the jade pendant at his chest. His expression was one of intense focus, as if listening to a distant melody only he could hear.
"Xuán Chè?" Yisha whispered with surprise.
"My… previous Sifu," Xuán Chè began, choosing his words with care, "sent me to Wàng Yōu Zhèn for protection. This one…" He gestured towards Wù Fēng, his dark eyes holding a newfound clarity. "When he dispersed the cyclones…that is a power I need to learn."
Wù Fēng's amused smile softened into something akin to approval. "Hǎo!"
Li Wei's icy demeanor remained, but the rigid set of his shoulders relaxed a fraction. His primary concern was, as always, their safety and their loyalty to their true master.
"And Zhǔmǔ?" Li Wei asked, with unwavering reverence. We do not pledge ourselves to another without her consent."
"Zhǔmǔ?" Wù Fēng asked, intrigued.
"Yes," Yisha added. The woman who raised us. The indomitable, fearsome Proprietress of Zuì Mèng Lóu, Xuán Líng."
"Ah, the venerable Nine-Tailed Fox!" Wù Fēng chuckled, a sound like wind chimes. "Do not fear, little frost fox. I have no wish to usurp her place in your hearts," he comforted. "Besides, I think she would welcome it."
"A mother teaches a child to walk and talk. A master teaches them to wield a sword and comprehend the Dao. They are not the same. Consider me a…visiting tutor, hired to instruct you in a specialized subject. Godhood."
The audacity of the statement, delivered with such casual charm, left them momentarily speechless.
Wù Fēng took their silence as consent. "Excellent! Then the matter is settled for now. We shall proceed to the Cloud Dream Marsh. The journey will be your first lesson."
He clapped his hands together once, a sharp, clear sound that seemed to cleanse the very air. "Lesson One: Perception. You have been tracking the symptoms of the Blight. Now, you will learn to see its flow. Its intent."
He pointed a slender, porcelain finger at a withered patch of grass near Qiānyí's feet. "Xu Qiānyí. Do not try to heal it. First, you must listen. Feel the pattern of its decay. Is it spreading like a spill, or growing like a mold? Is it hungry, or is it… bored? What is it asking you for?"
Qiānyí blinked, startled by the bizarre question. Bored? But she knelt, placing her palm on the cold, dead earth, her brow furrowed in concentration. For the first time, she stopped trying to push her own geomantic energy into the soil and instead opened herself to receive the message the earth was trying to tell her.
Wù Fēng watched her, then turned his twinkling eyes to the others.
"Li Wei, feel the absence of heat, the stillness where life's fire should be. You only know how to produce cold. You must learn how to control it. Absorb it. Yisha, see not the dimming of the light, but the frequency of shadow this corruption casts," he continued to instruct.
His eyes then fell upon Xuán Chè, but his instructions for him were different. A bit softer, more contemplative. "And you, young Xuán Chè. Your path is one of seeking." He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a tone meant only for them. "That jade pendant you carry… it is a fine ward. It hides you from prying eyes. But tell me, does it not also feel… heavy? Like a sheath that is too small for the blade it contains?"
Xuán Chè's fingers tightened around the pendant, his heart skipping a beat.
How could he know?
The feeling was one he'd never been able to articulate. It was a constant, gentle pressure, a sense of being muted but he did not know how or in which way. His own Sifu had told him never, under any circumstances, to remove it.
Wù Fēng smiled, his lips gently curving. "For this, you do not need a sheath. You need to feel the air on the steel. I want you to walk the perimeter. But do not use your eyes. Do not even try to see with your other senses. Touch, smell, sound--focus your qi to experience more than sight. Simply… listen. To the wind. To the silence between the sounds. Let your spirit, unfettered, tell you what is wrong with this place. Trust the instinct that led you to the Zuì Mèng Lóu."
It was a command that asked for trust, not a specific action. Before Xuán Chè could question it, Wù Fēng reached out and, with an impossibly subtle motion, tapped the center of the jade pendant.
There was no flash of light, no thunderous roar, nor subtle sound. Only a sudden, dizzying sense of release. The constant, gentle pressure he had lived with for so long simply vanished.
A cool, clear energy, like a mountain spring he hadn't known was dammed, began to trickle through his meridians. His world suddenly seemed sharper, the colors more vivid, the air alive with textures he could almost taste.
He stared at Wù Fēng, wide-eyed, but the High God was already turning away, his attention back to Qiānyí. "Well? Xu Qiānyí, what does the earth tell you?"
The lesson had begun. And Xuán Chè, now unknowingly unsealed, felt more exposed, more vulnerable, and more acutely aware of the world around him than ever before. Wù Fēng not only gave instructions but also revealed how much he knew about them.
As Xuán Chè began to walk the perimeter, a new, wilder scent lingered at the edge of his perception; a scent of dry leaves, cold moonlight, and ancient, deep-buried magic. It was the scent of his own awakening blood, and he had no name for it.
As they scattered to their assignments, Yisha fell into step beside Xuán Chè, her voice a low murmur. "Are you sure about this, Xuán Chè? He's… eccentric."
"My first Sifu," he said quietly, the memory sharp and clear, "I think he saw this Blight coming. But he couldn't stop what was coming. He couldn't teach me how to fight it."
He looked back towards Wù Fēng, who was now gently correcting Li Wei's stance with a casual wag of his finger. "This one… he didn't just save us. He didn't just see the Blight. He's offering a way to fight back, not just run. My old Sifu gave me a path to a sanctuary. This one… he might be giving me a path to the reason my first Sifu never returned."
His gaze met Yisha's, and the feral depth in them was now mixed with a resolute, burning purpose. "Perhaps it takes the strange to mend a broken world."
Yisha nodded. "We do seem to be a strange bunch. Especially him," gesturing toward Wù Fēng. Yisha's eyes lingered on Wù Fēng for a while, curious.
They worked until the wee hours of the night, the moon a cold spectator to their strange tutelage. The air grew chilly, but a new warmth of understanding began to kindle within each of them. Finally, Wù Fēng clapped his hands softly, the sound pulling them from their deep concentration.
"Enough," he said, his voice a calm ripple in the silent night. "Gather round. What did you feel?"
Li Wei spoke first, his voice like grinding ice. "The cold here is not natural. It is not the absence of heat, but a force that actively consumes it. A hungry void."
Yisha nodded, her usual radiance tempered by focus. "The shadows it casts... they are not merely an absence of light. They have a substance, a sticky, clinging quality that devours luminance. Light doesn't just fail to reach, but it's... consumed by the shadows."
Qiānyí's face was pale with effort, but her eyes shone with a fierce, intellectual fire. "It's a pattern. Not a spill, not a mold... a web. It spreads along the earth's dragon veins, the natural channels of spiritual energy."
Wù Fēng smiled as Qiānyí continued.
"It hijacks the land's flow of energy and redirects it towards... nothingness. It is a system of theft."
She looked at Wù Fēng, her voice trembling slightly with the revelation. "You were right."
All eyes then turned to Xuán Chè. He had been quiet, his expression one of profound disquiet. "I... heard it," he said, his voice low. "When I stopped trying to listen for anything specific, I could hear it. A faint, dissonant whirr. And it smells... like rust and static and...sulphur. It feels... deliberate."
Wù Fēng beamed, a proud smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Excellent! You have passed the first, and most important, lesson: Perception. You have moved from seeing the effect to sensing the cause."
His gaze grew more intense.
"Now, for a taste of the second lesson: Restoration. To heal a land afflicted by this, you cannot simply pour your qi back into it. The parasitic system will just steal it. You would waste your energy and probably die. You must do three things simultaneously:
First, you must isolate a section of the web, as a physician isolates a festering wound from the healthy flesh. Second, you must overwhelm the parasitic pattern within that section with a concept so pure and antithetical to it that it cannot be consumed; only erased. And third, you must reignite the land's own latent spirit, its memory of being alive."
He looked at each of them in turn. "Individually, you lack the power and the finesse. But together, guided by a single will, you can be the conduit."
He raised his hands. "Form a circle around this small patch of blighted earth. Do not resist what comes next."
As they moved into position, Wù Fēng closed his eyes. A gentle, golden light began to emanate from him, not blinding, but profound. It flowed, spilling out to encircle the quartet. Tendrils of divine energy, warm and impossibly vast, reached for them.
Li Wei gasped as the power touched him. It did not feel foreign, but it felt as if the sun had ignited within his core. It was a feeling of something radiant, both warm and cool, amplifying his frost qi a thousand-fold, transforming it into something beyond anything he had ever known or felt. His ice was no longer just cold and frost, but it was still and calm, and a quiet that stirred, allowing something new to grow within his qi.
Qiānyí let out a soft cry as the energy settled into her, resonating with the earth beneath her feet. Wù Fēng energy ignited her earth qi and sharpened her ability to reconnect with and reestablish natural law, rerouting the sickened dragon veins back to their true purpose.
Then the Wu Feng's energy reached Yisha. She braced for the same foreign warmth, the same borrowed strength. But when it touched her, she experienced something entirely different.
Wù Fēng 's energy did not feel as if he were lending it to her. It felt as if he were returning it to her.
The golden light sank into her like water into dry, thirsty soil, filling spaces she had not known were empty. Her radiant qi was awakened, not amplified, feeling her power surge, not as an echo of Wù Fēng 's power, but in resonance with it, a matching pulse that sang in harmony with his. It was as if she had somehow taken on a piece of his divinity, a spark that recognized her own and pulled it to the surface.
Her light, a warm, playful glow, became something even more splendid. Though it kept its warmth and playful energy, it was somehow steadier, both heavier and lighter. Brighter. Focused.
She looked at Wù Fēng, her eyes wide. Their powers had not merely aligned. They were identical. The same essence. The same source. And in that moment, she felt stronger than any of them, not because she was greater, but because her power responded to him the way a hand reaches for something familiar in the dark.
What are you to me? Who are you to me?
The question burned in her chest, but there was no time to ask.
And Xuán Chè... he felt his newly unsealed spirit surge. The wild, ancient scent he had detected now roared through him, given form and direction. Something old stirred beneath his skin, older than memory, older than name, and he did not yet have the words for what it wanted to become.
"Now," Wù Fēng's voice was a whisper in all their souls. "Not as four, but as one. Do not command the power. Be the intention."
As one, they directed their unified will toward the blighted patch. Li Wei's frost qi froze the parasitic web in place, isolating it. Yisha's radiant qi poured in, scouring the shadows, not with brute force, but with undeniable truth. Qiānyí's earth qi rewrote the pattern, the ground groaning as its stolen dragon veins were returned. And Xuán Chè's power called out, wordless and old, a silent summons to the slumbering spirit of the soil.
Under the moonlight, the grey, cracked earth trembled. The foul, rusty static vanished. Then, a single, vibrant green shoot pushed through the soil, unfurling a perfect leaf. Then another, and another, until the small patch was a riot of healthy grass and clover, a stark, beautiful oasis in the field of decay.
The golden light receded. The quartet stumbled, the divine power leaving them as quickly as it came, leaving them hollowed out, breathless, and awestruck.
They stared at the small, living patch of earth, then at each other, and finally at Wù Fēng.
The High God smiled, a simple, satisfied expression. "That," he said softly, "is a glimpse of the path ahead. Remember this feeling. This is what we walk towards."
The feeling of that divine, unified power still thrummed in their veins, a fading echo of a symphony they had only been allowed to hear for a moment. It was a miracle. A tangible, impossible proof that the Blight could be beaten.
A single, cold droplet of water struck Li Wei's cheek, then another on Yisha's outstretched hand. They looked up. The clear, star-dusted sky was gone. In its place, a roiling, purple-black mass of clouds had congealed from nothing, blotting out the moon. A torrential downpour erupted, drenching them in an instant.
Wù Fēng looked up, and his usual contented face was gone. His brows were furrowed, his lips pressed into a thin line. The whimsical High God was replaced by a being who saw a timeline collapsing. He was worried.
"I have some good news and some bad news," he said, his voice cutting through the drumming rain. "Well, the bad news is the good news, and the good news is the bad news."
"What? What are you babbling about?" Yisha asked, wiping water from her eyes, the others sharing in her confusion and growing alarm.
"One of you girls is about to have your Heavenly Tribulation," Wù Fēng stated, his gaze flicking between Qiānyí and Yisha. "Or both. Who knows. I did not think it would happen this soon."
A single, blindingly bright thunderbolt lanced down from the heavens, striking the ruined roof of the building they had fought atop earlier. The concussive CRACK was deafening, shaking the ground and illuminating their terrified faces in a stark, white flash.
"You mean, we're about to be struck by lightning? That Heavenly Tribulation? That's what you're saying?" Qiānyí asked, her voice rising in panic.
"Yes. That's exactly it," Wù Fēng answered, his tone grimly matter-of-fact. "A trial by heavenly lightning for the first ascension. It judges your soul, your resolve, your very Dao. Very few survive." He gave a small, helpless shrug. "Good luck."
"GOOD LUCK?" Yisha yelled, her voice a mix of furious betrayal and primal fear. The rain plastered her hair to her face, her radiant light sputtering against the oppressive celestial might. "You brought this on us and all you can say is 'good luck? YOU—!"
Before she could finish her sentence, the heavens answered.
Not one, but three colossal bolts of pure, destructive lightning, each thicker than an ancient tree, forked from the cloud directly above them and struck her down.
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© 2025 Kiesha Richardson, writing as QiXia. All rights reserved.
Death Blooms for You is an original work of fiction by QiXia. Unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or adaptation of this story in any form is prohibited. All characters, events, and settings are created for entertainment purposes and bear no intentional resemblance to real persons or situations.