Sango's axe was inches overhead, yet hope was right beneath it. Infused with all of Erlang Shen's power, Heavenly Warrior Xinyu stood up and caught the axe between her palms. There she held firm, the blue glow illuminating her body growing brighter with each breath. Upon her forehead, a closed orifice appeared: Erlang's third heavenly eye that saw all truths.
When the eye unfurled, it unleashed a massive beam of continuous fiery energy that blasted Sango in the center of his chest and forced him to be gushed far away from Kalahali. The destruction he had wrought still lingered in the crumbling city, but Xinyu had saved it for the moment. If she wished for it to remain standing, she would have to finish the fight fast, as she felt her life evaporating with every second that passed.
Crossing mountain lengths in seconds, Sango's massive body flew through the dark skies, leaving an indent in the cloudy ceiling and sending crushing shockwaves that reverberated across the lands. Hours, perhaps days, away from the city, the elder god smashed into the desert floor, leaving a haunting gash on the ground in his wake. Weltering in gathering rage, the god had finally acknowledged the one who opposed him. He rose as the earth around him cracked and crumbled into itself as its very fabric was destroyed by his immense pressure. In that moment, the immortal, indestructible force beyond nature became the greatest threat humanity had ever seen, for never before had they been faced with an angry god. Thy corrupt and enraged deity beyond comprehension had no words, no reasoning, no mercy; only the intent to destroy all. It focused its intense eyes on the city, which could barely be seen in the far distance.
Back in the city, speckles of light sparkled around Xinyu's hand to mold a weapon, specifically, Erlang's three-pointed, double-edged lance. It was a noble spear, one that glistened silver and irradiated the righteous soul of its user. While a bit large for Xinyu's small hands, she gracefully used her newfound strength to twirl it between her fingers as if it were lighter than feathers.
Xinyu had attained Erlang's power to its fullest. It felt invigorating, overwhelming, and most importantly, it ate away at her very being every second she remained empowered. As warned by Erlang's spirit, she did not have long. She appeared next to Musique, who was trying to hold the city's citizens together through his songs.
"What happened?" Musique asked, struggling to maintain his spells. "You look a bit different."
"There is no time. I can only match his power for several minutes," Xinyu said. "If I do not live to taste the fruits of tomorrow, make sure to sing plenty of songs about me."
"I don't think there will be anyone left to hear them," Musique said. "Even if you can equate his strength for a few minutes, that's not going to-"
"It is okay!" Xinyu assured. "Even if the gods abandon us and the world is set aflame, I will be the one to pull it from the darkness."
"If you think there's still a chance, then I'll believe in you," Musique said as he cast a yellowish spell on her. It took away her fatigue and lightened her body. "It's a healing spell. I hope that it'll allow you to fight just a bit longer, even if it's only a couple of seconds."
Xinyu nodded. Her body felt like it had been shattered into pieces and reassembled with only the most flimsy glue. She was falling apart at her core. Musique's healing spell gave her a little bit of strength, but the minutes were ticking away, and her time, her life, was running away from her faster than ever before. Faster than she ran from her past. Faster than the army of angels. So fast, she couldn't believe it. This was her last chance to achieve her ultimate goal. She vowed she would convey the gods' secret to humanity by sacrificing it all, and thus, show the possibility of a different future. It was the only way she could help protect the smiles of the future. The outcome of Kitsune's prophecy would soon come true, but not the way the fox envisioned it. The future Xinyu had in mind was hers, and hers alone.
"Good luck," Musique said before turning back to the burning city. "I'll try to prevent more loss of life here and-"
"Musique," Xinyu said.
"Yes?" Musique asked.
"You are such a cute boy," Xinyu giggled. Musique spun around at the strange comment, but she was already gone.
From the center of the city, Xinyu squatted, coiling her unyielding legs down like titanium springs. She inhaled a lake's worth of the smoky air and then, with a thrust upward, propelled her body forward, and became a streak of sapphire light across the ashen sky. Panicked citizens of Kalahari looked up at the shooting star flying across the atmosphere of darkness, praying to it and wishing to be saved. Those in towns and villages all across the desert saw and admired it, though they knew not why. From across the mountains, humanity watched in tandem at the glimmer of hope in the sky; a speck of light shimmering in the spontaneous nighttime that flooded the entire world in that moment.
As Xinyu soared over the earth and heavens, she looked down and saw the whole world. From the swaying forests of grassy aromas, to the glassy cities that reached to the stars, to the tiny villages that held secrets kings would never know, she couldn't help but shed a tear. That fateful day, she cried not out of sadness, but from gratitude.
"Thank you for letting someone like me see the beautiful world. For that, I am
eternally grateful."
She then smiled because there was no place or time she'd rather be. Humanity, imperfect as it was, was something worth love, after all. She gazed at it, once last time.
"I love you so much."
Xinyu crashed before Sango, shattering the land's crushed rims to even lower depths. The god, who had composed himself from the fall, towered once again above the mountains and peered down at her. He had finally noticed the insignificant being willing to defy him, and thus, would unleash his full power, nay, wrath upon her. In preparation to strike, his fatless muscles expanded, tightening the skin in his vascular arms so much that it began to crinkle and screech. His body became infused with electricity as bolts of lightning escaped his pores and shot out in all directions, denting everywhere they struck. The earth and perhaps all of the Southlands quaked at the energy irradiating Sango, and when he wrought his axe upward faster than a Minokawa's ascent, he tore the sky once again.
He went for the kill. The divine guillotine's strike was much harder and swifter than when it hovered over the city and summoned roaring hurricanes as it fell.
"As long as I still stand, this world will remain!" Xinyu said.
Xinyu, with the three-pronged lance, jumped to meet his axe. As she soared beyond her limits, the weapon began to grow many times her own body's size and was larger than a Northland greatsword by the time the axe was within her reach. She clashed her lance with Sango's weapon, vibrating the rocky country and sending waves of wind that kicked up storms of dust. They both fell back as their weapons parted, but each caught their fall with opposing stomping feet.
Xinyu blinked.
When her eyes opened, she saw that the axe was already a hair's breadth over her head. Though his body was enormous, it still moved with the speed of electricity. Sango, above all else, was indeed the embodiment of lightning, greater than even Leigong.
As fortune would have it, Erlang Shen was just as fast. Xinyu swiftly stepped to the side and saw her reflection in the shining metal of the axe's head. She brushed a strand of hair from her face and admired her gleaming smile.
I never realized… has my smile always been this pretty? Xinyu thought to herself as she placed the sole of her foot on the axe right before it hit the ground.
She kicked it away.
The sudden disturbance of the axe's trajectory caused Sango to tumble as he fell off balance. Before he slammed into the ground, he used his other foot to launch himself up, and his massive body began to twirl in the air, gaining immense momentum as he did so. After dozens of spins in less than a second, he wacked his axe down onto Xinyu, who hit it away with her spear. They both jumped back, leaving afterimages of electricity and blue radiation in their wake.
Their light-imbued bodies became suns in the darkness swamping the world as they slowly began walking towards each other. Sango struck down once more, but Xinyu jumped and stabbed at his chest. Sango leaned back, avoiding the impact of the spear's tip, and threw a kick at Xinyu. His foot was so large that it couldn't be dodged at the speeds he was moving, but it didn't matter since Xinyu met its center with her fist. They both were pushed back from the impact and immediately began to swing madly at each other with their weapons, blocking and striking with perfect precision. From a distance, it looked as if Sango was fighting against an invisible opponent, for the only thing that could be seen of Xinyu was her light. Insignificant in size she may have been, her power was greater than any mortal being, and many immortal ones had ever attained.
Clashing millions of times in seconds, their steel tips smashed together endlessly, clanging a cacophony of metallic clings and crashes that echoed in every surrounding valley. The sound itself was enough to create hurricanes, their strikes powerful enough to fell gods. Each time their metal slammed together, the earth around them crumbled and sank deeper, causing them to dig a crevice far beneath the ground. They swung and dug until they were in the depths of an abyssal pothole whose bottom could not be seen from above. Valleys wide and endlessly deep, a new crater in the desert was created as a result of the onslaught of raw strength, and continued to crumble outward further as the two opponents struck each other's metal.
The deeper they went, the more Xinyu felt like her body was burning away. She could not hold onto Erlang's power much longer, and if she hesitated in a single one of her movements, she would be the first to fall. No matter what, she would not give in. If she could just continue to smile, then everything would be okay. She would find a way, just like she always had. She would expose their secret, just as she said. She would follow the path of the Hero of Joy she desired to be. Her sister's words rang in her head like funeral bells at the end of life. They encouraged her.
Do not give up, do not falter, not even for a moment.
Boulders crumbled to dust, and the scape grew even darker than before. The black clouds covering the sky flew to Sango, surrounding his body in a murky haze of utter shadows. Streaks of lightning colored blue, purple, yellow, and red came together and weaved into the depths of the hole. The terrain itself began to melt in the wake of the electricity's immense heat, and the crevice became a pool of molten rock and electric storms. Tornadoes of fire from the erupting earth hit the crevices, melting sides, and the only light in the radius was the wrath of thunder that boomed and quaked.
Still, with Erlang's Nine Turns Divine Skill, Xinyu could withstand the poisonous pressure of lava spurts and gas. She stood firm even as the air evaporated into nothingness. She herself summoned every bit of power she could from Erlang and once again opened her third eye of truth. She gazed into his soul, looking for a weakness.
What she saw was not Sango himself, but a corrupt shell that had been stricken from the god long before their fight. The evil that threatened her now was no longer Sango in any sense except its power and form. Still, even with the heavenly eye of truth, she could not see the cause of such decay.
Taken aback by this, Xinyu winced, and the elder god seized the opportunity to strike her with the hottest lightning. The axe passed her by, and she barely managed to dodge, though it grazed her.
Xinyu looked to her left and screamed. Where her arm should have been was nothing. There was no blood for it had been instantly cauterized by the electricity's intense heat.
She fell to her knees and wept as she couldn't focus on keeping her breaking body together with the pain she felt. Her arm was gone, and her existence became a hellish agony that made her wish she were dead.
As a result, her skin started bleeding and crumbling away, unable to concentrate and contain Erlang's power any longer. Her bones dusted into powder, and muscles began to pull apart by their very nerves, torn apart by the uncontrolled power ravaging her soul. Blood seeped out of her until she was completely dry on the inside and broken beyond repair. All she had left was her will, which remained unbroken despite being shattered into a thousand pieces.
Do not give up, do not falter, not even for a moment.
Xinyu couldn't bear it, but something within her kept her moving forward. A secret of her own and an unwavering conviction that would not be broken by a mere god. She had a goal, and even if she had to give up her humanity to see it through, she would do it. Pain was essential for life, yet knowing hers was all but finished, she gave it up.
Burning her body with the intensity of Erlang's magic, she destroyed her pain receptors and gained control over her body, though, only for a few more seconds.
With one of the few movements she had left in her walking corpse, threaded together by Erlang's widdling magic and her willpower, she rose.
She smiled.
Xinyu Ma knew a secret, one which no one but her knew. She had to tell it to the world before she died, no matter what. She owed that much to the ones who brought her to that moment.
Xinyu remembered when she walked up to Bai Hu for the first time. She felt nothing but fear. When she saw Brax for the first time, she empathized with him. She felt bad for him, but she also related to his struggles. After hearing about King Arthur and his exploits, she couldn't help but feel inspired beyond belief. When she spoke to Lily, they disagreed and argued. She did not like her, but she said something she didn't mean. Cygnus was cool, though she thought he was trying to look attractive on purpose. While she did not prefer boys when it came to love, she thought Musique was so pretty. Had she more time, she would have loved to fall for him. Or maybe the cute receptionist at Avalon. She would also have liked to make up with Lily and hear more stories about Arthur. She wanted to eat good food until she was fat and explore the world until she was bored. But even more than that, she wanted to go on more adventures with her friends.
It was these emotions that flawed her and made her human. She took up the mantle of the strongest and proclaimed she would defy the gods to protect humanity's smiles, but what she really wanted was freedom. Freedom for all marked by the stretchy smiles of people from all different types. Why? Because she loved them.
It did not matter what race, or sex, or belief, because they were worthy of her love. And the magic of love knew no limits. Was she really so greedy for wanting something so selfless? She didn't think so.
"No matter how much this world takes, I could never give it up," Xinyu thought. "Because I have found things within it to love!"
Sango's body raised Oche high into the darkness of the pothole, and readied himself to unleash his final thrust to finish Xinyu. As his throbbing vascular might flexed and bloated, his axe began to absorb every color of lightning in the air until it became enshrouded in an amalgamation of black thunder that roared as it soared towards what was left of Xinyu's crumbling self. This infinitely powerful strike of black lightning and unmatched heavenly strength was the one that had wiped the old Southland nation from the map one thousand years prior, and was now upon the Merchant of Joy. Upon the world. And despite that, she didn't falter.
Xinyu mustered everything. All the power she ever had herself, all of Erlang's power, the bits she could take of Leigong, the twelve zodiac warriors, the swords, and the archer; she mustered everything from her journey with her last breath. She felt the spirits of her friends around her, and the ghost of her sister propping her up.
She would have to use all the might she ever had should she wish to taste victory before she succumbed to her fate. To see the peach tree bloom and taste its peaches.
She tensed as her body whittled away. Her fingers clasped the spear so tightly that they sank into the metal. She grit her teeth as blood blinded her human eyes and wet her tongue with salty iron. She savored the taste, for it was the last meal she would ever have. A delicious soup of her own blood and burnt gums. Her grin showed the red liquid between each tooth and dripped from her lips. Rousing every inch of skin from the tip of her head to her toes, she felt the world and jumped, using broken bones. With the great axe before her once more, she, too, swung.
"Even in the face of a god…"
Xinyu's hair flew up from the gales blowing all around.
"I have never forgotten…"
The only thing that could be seen was the azul lighthouse Xinyu became in the storm, and Sango's black thunder ax falling through the cloudy smog of darkness.
"The path before me!"
Xinyu's heart beat so fast it became electrified with excitement and fright. And though the next hit would mark her end, and maybe end the lives of thousands, she was, at the very least, following her dream to the very end.
"A life free from fate. That was, and always has been, the path I desired to follow. Burn bright now and forever more, my love, my smile, my humanity. Fight back, for this is my gift to you." Her words echoed throughout the world, and all of humanity heard them at once. They saw her. They felt her.
When Xinyu's lance and Sango's axe met for the final time, their clash shattered the area's existence like glass. Fire spewed from the pit into the atmosphere, lighting the skies aflame and inciting ember rain. Meteors of jagged rocks showered down and burst into a downpour of gooey red pebbles, morphing the scape into hell above hell. The cracks in the desert quickly became deep ravines; pits to the eighth level of hell, as the land quaked from east to west. Any life that was in the vicinity was eviscerated into oblivion, burnt to naught, be they above or below ground.
Not a second went by, but an eternity of time passed between the two struggling souls as they tipped the balance over and over again. Both were exerting full power, and an explosion of pure energy swept all around like razors as their weapons stood still in a stalemate.
Xinyu, fading black, went blind as her eyes and vision left. Next, her hearing and sense of touch evaporated into the cesspool of nature's magic. She could no longer smell her burning flesh or feel the coldness of her sweat. Nothing remained but her willpower dragging her corpse forward on instinct alone. In the darkness of her mind, one single phrase played on repeat, just as it always had: "Do not give up, do not falter, not even for a moment." Over and over again, for the small eternity in which their divine metal clashed, her soul was unbreakable, and that sturdiness transferred to her trembling hands. She continued to smile, high on euphoria, because she finally got to taste them. The peaches. They were salty.
And then…
in the midst of the darkest, most hopeless night
…Sango's ax shattered.
The giant god stood deep inside the crater, clenching his fists as his weapon broke. Xinyu ascended to the sky, cutting through the dark clouds and blowing them away. She held the spear overhead and shone so brightly that she eviscerated the darkness. The midday sun could once again be seen, blindingly, and the curse of evil was lifted. Sango looked up at the human above him and saw an eclipse as her body blocked him from seeing the sky's light.
"With all my remaining strength, I unleash the Howling Celestial Dog to maul and vanquish the evil before me."
As she wrought the lance down, the weapon enlarged to the size of Sango himself. Though it looked like a giant spear to anyone else, only the targeted evil could see it for what it truly was: a vicious astral wolf bolting towards him with its vicious teeth.
In her final breath of hurrah, her power exhausted, her stolen magic gone, and her life passed, Xinyu thrust the wolf-imbued lance into Sango's heart, piercing straight through the other side. Sango did not struggle, for his demise was instant. With a giant hole in his chest, his entire body grew grey and began to dust into oblivion, blown away by the winds their fight had created. It was then that Sango, immortal and all-powerful elder god of the Southlands, became one with the desert sand.
Xinyu's goal was to expose the gods' secret. The one she alone knew, but would not say, for she never had the means to prove it until that moment.
And that secret was…
…gods could die.