Dr. Ueda was on a walk through a park with Miss Dayal when suddenly the woman froze. Dr. Ueda stopped once she noticed and turned around.

 

“Vaidehi? Is everything all right?”

 

Vaidehi’s eyes went wide. She wrapped her arms around her sides and began to tremble.

 

“It’s…terrible. Like nothing I’ve felt.”

 

Dr. Ueda’s eyes narrowed. She walked over and put one hand on Vaidehi’s shoulder. She glanced around at their surroundings, reaching for her pocket with her other hand as she scanned the trees.

 

“...what is it?”

 

“It feels like…the Earth…is afraid.”

 

Dr. Ueda’s jaw dropped.

 

“The Earth…is…afraid?”

 

Vaidehi slowly nodded.

 

“Afraid of what?”

 

“....I do not wish to know.”

 

---

 

The Otter King swam through the ocean. He dove down to the ocean floor, coming to a large boulder covered in runes. He frowned as he observed the flashing lights and swam back to the surface. He took a large breath…

 

And then started swimming in the other direction.

 

“Ah heck nah! Ah ain’t dealing with something like ‘at! The humies started this, they can take care of it themselves!!”

 

---

 

Ivan sat at Markus’s desk, whistling as he flipped through reports. The boss himself was wrapped up in yet another investigation into ‘aiding and abetting villainy’...well EL Bank had lawyers for days so there wasn’t any real trouble.

 

In fact.

 

The hearing Markus had to go to actually ended about a week ago.

 

The man was off carousing somewhere…it happened to be tax season after all. And since EL was under countless investigations, they had to undergo a LOT of paperwork around this time every year to make sure they were squeaky clean on the tax front.

 

It’s one thing to annoy the ILS.

 

It’s another thing entirely to cheat the IRS.

 

Suddenly the elevator doors opened. Ivan glanced up and his jaw dropped.

 

“B-Babushka? What are you doing here?”

 

THWACK!

 

Baba Yaga appeared behind him.

 

“I can go anywhere I want! And be grateful, I’m here to warn you, Ivan! Stay away from that fool boy for a bit!”

 

“Friend Bob? What is wrong, Babushka?”

 

Baba Yaga just started cackling.

 

“Oh, that fool boy has no idea what he’s unleashed.”

 

With that, she hobbled back to the elevator, cackling the entire way back to her room.

 

—

 

Somewhere far away in the world, Bob froze. A chill ran down his spine and he began to tremble.

 

He had an extraordinarily bad feeling about this.

 

As if…he had unleashed something great and terrible. Had set things into motion which could not be undone.

 

The world itself trembled. The heavens shook. All of existence suddenly cried out and then whispered to him…

Bob, you idiot!

 

---

 

On the peak of a mountain, surrounded by a floor of clouds as far as the eye could see, sat a girl with her eyes closed. The frigid winds, the thin air, and the plummeting temperatures had no effect on her despite her light clothing. In fact, her hair remained perfectly still despite the gusts of wind swirling around her.

 

She took a deep breath.

 

She exhaled it.

 

She breathed in.

 

She breathed out.

 

She circulated the qi around her body one more time.

 

Everything locked into place.

 

She slowly opened her eyes.

 

She had done it.

 

She found a new base for her cultivation. A new emotion, so she would not have to rebuild the Eternal Night’s cultivation techniques from scratch. A perfect replacement.

 

No, it went beyond that.

 

The new emotion was not just a suitable replacement for hatred…it was, surprisingly, a complement. She could keep all of her old cultivation, replacing its foundation without any loss whatsoever. What’s more, her old cultivation of hatred had created a feedback loop with the new emotion, both feeding into and elevating the other. Two cores of power, her qi spiraling from one extreme to the other and growing with each circuit. It was as if…hatred was always only half of the puzzle, and she had found the other half.

So she had not only managed to maintain her cultivation, as strong as ever, but she had elevated it, and was now stronger than ever. She could feel as her qi surged past her previous bottleneck, roaring to life with a power she had never imagined. Her heart pounded and she resisted a smile.

She could feel it…a new realm…one no cultivator had even imagined. So there was something beyond the heavens after all.

And she could tell. This emotion was infinitely more complex than raw anger. It could contain not only anger and hatred…but practically every other emotion as well. Happiness, sorrow, disappointment, serenity, fear. No matter what emotional state she found herself in, her cultivation would continue without any disruption. She could not be defeated by taking the wrong drug, and she could cultivate at any time, any place, with any emotion she experienced.

It would not be wrong to say it wasn’t an emotion at all, for it went beyond a simple emotional state, a fleeting feeling in the present moment. It was more like a state of being, an underlying current from which individual emotions would arise. If emotions were a sound…then this was the underlying tune, taking each emotional state and weaving it into a greater whole.

This…was the peak of emotional cultivation. The Eternal Night’s hate-cultivation seemed so primitive in hindsight. They had narrowed their vision, constraining themselves to a single hue among an entire spectrum of experience. They beat mindlessly on a simple drum…while Xiong Huang had unlocked an entire symphony, dozens of different and opposing parts combining into complex melodies no single instrument could produce alone.

 

This should have been the goal all along.

 

Yes, everything was perfect. More than perfect, really.

 

There was just one…

 

Minor…

 

Tiny little problem…

 

Xiong Huang’s face began to flush.

 

It was the emotion in question.

 

“Seriously?! Me?! The Mistress of the Eternal Night Sect?! The Murderous Bloody Fist?! Reduced to a mere…”

 

Her face turned bright red.

 

“WHY THIS ONE?!”

 

She closed her eyes and slammed her fist onto the mountain peak. Cracks rippled down all the way to the base and continued into the Earth.

Xiong Huang stood up. She clenched her fists and shouted into the sky.

 

“YOU…T-THIS IS YOUR FAULT! ALL YOUR FAULT! I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU! YOU DID THIS TO ME! YOU HEAR ME BOB?! I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU! YOU…YOU IDIOT!”

 

And so the heavens and the Earth trembled…as the most powerful being in all of history prepared for her return.

 

Neither the world…nor a certain faceless minion…were prepared for what is to come.