Chapter 199 - Seeking Help

White dirt and gravel scattered behind her as Yuzu broke into a sprint.

Multiple premonitions of her body being impaled by wicked spears made of bone crashed into her mind as she dashed forward toward the gate . Every instinct in her body screamed at her to stop the suicide rush. Even her white string wavered and frayed, looking like it was about to snap.

However through sheer willpower Yuzu forced her string to remain tied onto Li Ru beyond the gate.

As she dashed past the first line of bone spears that protruded out of the ground, the earth began to crack and rumble. 

Yuzu felt the razor wind of the spears just graze past her as she continued to run. An elated feeling filled her body as she recklessly continued forward, not even processing the dozens of spears that sprung out of the ground to block off the gate.

As the world erupted around her in dizzying fashion she felt like she was possessed by divinity, her destiny secured by the will of Fate itself. 

Her will.

Before she knew it she was standing on the other side, her heart beating out of her chest.

Li Ru had resumed his sagely pose with his arms crossed inside the sleeves of his robes. He looked down his nose at her as she glared back at him, heaving for breath.

“Who is your patron God?” He demanded.

“No one-“ 

“Don’t play games with me!” He snapped, “Who brought you here?”

“I did! Under my own power!” Yuzu growled, still shaking from the adrenaline. “Do you see anyone else here? It’s just me!”

“Foolish girl.” Li Ru scoffed, “You think you overcame my defenses with your clumsy movements? I simply took pity on you in your desperation. I let you enter.”

Yuzu dropped her gaze, discreetly examining the fate threads. Her white string flexed and glowed brightly as it regained its strength, lazily wrapping around the scholar’s black thread which was also relaxing. A smirk tugged at her lips as she saw that the danger had passed, and that her fate within the temple had solidified. 

Though her face was concealed, Li Ru didn’t miss her expression. His eyebrows knit together as a look of concern and perplexity flickered across his eyes.

He hesitated as he remembered the divine pressure that he felt moments before her dash toward the gates.

“I told you.” Yuzu said, finally recovering as she stood up straight and glared at him, “I am the White Maiden.”

Li Ru’s eyes grew dark as he matched her glare. “And who, pray tell, would that be? I know of no such figure.”

The threads of fate told a different story to Yuzu as she chastised him with a shake of her head, “Don’t play games with me. You heard about Medusa’s investigation into Markus Gantt and lured her here specifically to ask about me.”

Yuzu continued methodically as Li Ru remained in shocked silence, “I already know you believe my words, you’re simply testing me. Trying to get me divulge information about myself.” 

“You’re wondering right now— what is my path? Is it Knowledge, is it Psyche? How is it that I’m seemingly reading your mind?” Yuzu’s lips curved into a smirk, “But you can’t figure out, if I were part of those domains, how I could have made it past the gate the way that I did.”

“Enough.” Li Ru frowned with a sweep of his arm, “Since you know all this already, then tell me what I want to know.”

Yuzu appraised Li Ru with a thoughtful expression, continuing her slow conversational pace. The slower the conversation went, the easier it was for her to read into the future. The more she read, the more she learned about this ancient scholar, the more she was able to control the conversation.

He was the poet Li Ru, the Ascetic Philosopher, Godless Angel of Death. Like many immortals, he held many names and titles, though on the grand scale of time he was still young. His rise to immortality happened only a thousand years ago, during the War of the Five Kings where he made his name.

He divulged this information in his future conversations with Yuzu because he was curious about her, and his curiosity led him to reveal facts in exchange for further information.

Information which Yuzu no longer had to divulge, now that she’d read the future. 

“I am attuned to the Domain of Fate.” Yuzu said, “I am here to seek help with dealing with the situation here in Kumin.”

“Fate…” Li Ru said softly, “So, it is as I suspected… But then, why do you not claim devotion to Akahi or the Kismet Order?” 

Akahi, Goddess of Fate, who was killed in a previous era. Yuzu’s heart fluttered in excitement as she learned some critical information about her Domain. This was information that even Argus didn’t seem to know. She fell in the End War, which ended the Era of Gods and Demons. After this, her followers were scattered and hunted down. 

…

The Kismet Order, this was the order that Argus warned me about. They are headed by Ezra, Angel of Fate, whose previous title was Akahi’s Sword. Li Ru only met her a few times…

“I don’t know Akahi, nor have I had contact with the Kismet Order.” Yuzu answered truthfully, “I only received these powers recently.”

“How recently?” Li Ru stroked his mustache habitually, “A few hundred years?”

Yuzu shook her head with a frown, “Like a week and a half ago?”

Li Ru’s serious expression broke as he chuckled, only to hold his tongue as he realized that Yuzu wasn’t making a joke. 

Curiosity turned to wonder, wonder to insight, insight to understanding.

“…Come with me.” Li Ru said softly.

He turned, leading the way toward the temple with a flourish of his robes. The bone palisades around the perimeter sunk back into the ground, restoring the temple grounds to a less macabre aesthetic. 

Yuzu followed behind Li Ru as he walked down the short path at a leisure pace. His body language discouraged her from walking beside him or speaking up, so she followed quietly while staying several paces behind him.

Her eyes wandered around the temple grounds as she finally had the time to take stock of her surroundings. Behind the gate a white dirt path led the way down a narrow courtyard. Rows of tombstones of various sizes lined the path, some of them were tall and engraved with long epitaphs, others were just a flat slab on the ground with a few words engraved in the stone. 

Yuzu noted that their weathered appearance was no different from the graves in the village. They didn’t appear particularly more important or special, despite occupying a prime spot within the cloistered walls at the peak of the mountain.

Once again she wondered to herself where all of these tombstones had come from. The village below was not large. At most there were two or three dozen small, scattered houses. There was no way that the thousands upon thousands of graves had originated from the past inhabitants of the village. 

Even if this were a mountain graveyard, who would even bring so many bodies this deep into the mountains for a burial?  Yuzu mused. Perhaps the graves here are empty, or perhaps there’s no graves at all. He might be a tombstone collector. That’s right, in the Great Library, the God of Knowledge collected a ridiculous amount of chandeliers, tables, and other ‘crafts’… Perhaps as an Angel of Death this is just his hobby…

It was a bit of a ridiculous idea, but Yuzu could not think of a normal reason for there to be so many graves on the mountain. A mild curiosity rose in her as she considered asking Li Ru. With the question in her mind, she reached out to fate, forming the intention to ask the scholar. In doing so, their threads changed ever so slightly to reflect the potential future conversation.

Yuzu held her hand over the thread, observing the result of her question.

Li Ru kept his broad back to her as he answered her without turning around.

“I made them.” He said with a casual tone, “Carved them with my own hands when I arrived here, many hundreds of years ago. You could say it was my hobby for a while…”

“Are these epitaphs for real people?” Yuzu frowned as she looked at the various tombstones and read their engravings.

“They were.” Li Ru replied, “But there are no bodies under the stones.”

So they’re not real graves then? How boring. Yuzu snuffed inwardly, though she felt slightly relieved to hear the truth. She broke connection with the fate string after hearing the response, letting go of the intention to ask the question. The strings once more relaxed and resumed their original course.

They quickly came up to the front doors of the three tiered white pagoda. It was old, but in good condition. The walls were clean and free of cracks. The clay shingles of the curved roof were free of debris and leaves.

Not that there are any trees around here to drop those leaves… Yuzu thought quietly. Does it rain in the white world? The condition here is far better than the condition of the village in the physical world. I wonder if there is a village below the peak here in the Aetheric plane, and if it’s also in good condition.  

The building was fairly small, with each floor no larger than the size of a floor of her family’s pawn shop. Yuzu tried to peek inside using the fate threads, but wasn’t surprised to find the images blurry and incomprehensible.

“Is this your own temple?” Yuzu asked.

“Once, long ago it was a temple, though it was never mine. Now, it is no more a temple than any of the buildings in the village.” Li Ru said. He placed a hand on the hand of the wooden door, pausing as he further considered Yuzu’s question.

“No, for the last thousand years this has been my home. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He paused, muttering something darkly under his breath as he pushed open the door and led the way in. The sound of the opening door drowned out his voice, preventing Yuzu from hearing him, though clearly he was only speaking to himself.

With the help of the fate threads, though, she was able to catch his quiet, private words.

“… and still, it’s more than I deserve.”