5 CHAPTER 4 | Death

The bunsen burner flickers blue in the sterile white environment of the laboratory. With experienced movements, Xuan Shang uncaps a flask of dark purple chemical and decants a few millilitres into a large Erlenmeyer flask, then drops a magnetic stirrer into the mixture and places it onto the machine. As he watches tendrils of colour seep through the previously transparent mixture, accompanied by the whirring of metal clanking rhythmically against glass, Xuan Shang catches sight of Beris Whyte's distorted reflection on the flask's surface.

She stands behind him and puts her face close to the fume hood surface, her nose and eyebrows wrinkling together as she stares curiously at the setup.

"Who let you into my lab, brat?"

"Zhan Yan."

Xuan Shang had gone to see him immediately after the challenge was made and asked him for access to Beris Whyte's lab. Zhan Yan had raised an eyebrow but agreed.

At his answer, Beris Whyte frowns and mutters, "Traitor," under her breath.

She pulls up a rolling chair next to him, spins it so that the back is facing him, then straddles it and rests her forearms casually against the back. There is the keen interest of a melon eater in her expression.

"Shouldn't you be preparing for your fight in..." glancing aside at the clock on the wall, "...an hour?"

"You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

"Mm. Gossip travels fast when it's the only legal pastime."

Xuan Shang lifts the flask and pours the contents into a boiling flask set on top of a heating element. The flask is connected to an adapter that leads to a condenser column. Cooling water flows continually through tubes on the condenser's side to bring down the temperature of the boiling solvent. Slowly, a drop of pale golden liquid beads up on the lip of the collection flask and rolls slowly down the glass.

"Even if I were in peak condition, I wouldn't be able to beat him in a head-on fight."

"So you're waiting to lose?" She raises an eyebrow and says, "Then where am I going to put my face?"

'With how shameless you are, do you even have to worry about that?'

Drolly, "You should have thought of that before you conscripted me. Or before you stamped your mark on me in front of everyone."

"If you lose, then I'll extend your quarantine period to three months."

Xuan Shang gives her a tired glance. She isn't even bothering to pretend that the length of the period was decided on her whim anymore.

"I never said I would lose." He watches as the flask slowly fills up to about ten millilitres of liquid. "Just that I'm not planning on fighting clean."

As he reaches forward to turn off the heating element, the wide sleeve of his lab coat slips backwards to reveal a series of painful-looking, swollen bumps on his wrists. As Beris Whyte's eyes snap right to it, Xuan Shang pulls his sleeve back down and ignores her interested expression.

"Give me a hint."

Shouldn't such a big leader be aloof? Admired only from afar?

"Don't pretend that you're not going to be there."

Caught red handed, she leans back with a nonchalant laugh and flaps a hand in front of her. "Well of course. My cute little student is going to be beat up today. How could I miss it?"

"You could, considering I'm not your student."

She coughs into her fist. It sounds like 'not yet.'

"Well, I'm gonna be inviting the Psycho and the Boss too. And Ah Yan is probably going to tag along because he's a worrier. You don't want to look bad in front of them, do you?"

Psycho? Boss?

"Who?"

"The other two National Pillars, of course."

"You don't act like one of them."

"Of course not. If I had Boss' iceberg face, babies would cry when they saw me. And as for Psycho... he's just a big ball of suppressed crazy rage. Someone needs to be the approachable one - say, what is that?"

Xuan Shang uses an eyedropper to suck up the few drops of precious golden liquid and carefully ejects it into a small spray bottle the size of his pinky finger.

"You'll see in an hour."

.

.

.

When the clock finally strikes five, Xuan Shang pushes open the door to the combat room where they are to fight. He is expecting a small room, but to his surprise, it is a large auditorium-style room with a raised centre stage and at least a hundred seats, of which half are filled by rubbernecking students. He hears them whispering as he passes, their eyes sticking to his figure, but he keeps his chin up and smiles with a lazy, apathetic air.

As he steps onto the stage, he narrows his eyes against the harsh, bright light. His gaze roves over the wooden panel walls that arch over two stories high, lingering over a large area that appears... different. It feels as though someone is watching him.

(Unbeknownst to him, Zhan Yan remarks to Beris Whyte from the hidden observation room, "He has good senses.")

"Hey, eyes down here, punk."

Xuan Shang puts down the plastic pail he had been carrying. It is made of standard plastic with a metal handle. The quiet sound of the pail hitting the ground is amplified in the silence and acoustics of the vast room, drawing all eyes to it.

"Kick his ass, Emerson!" comes a holler from the first row, where a group of delinquent-looking boys watch with eager anticipation, elbowing each other and loudly whispering about the many ways that .

Emerson - the fanboy - meets Xuan Shang's gaze. Without breaking eye contact, he cracks his neck left, then right, then pulls down viciously on his tie until the knot unravels and he hurls the strip of red cloth towards his little brothers.

"Last chance to surrender," he grunts out. The buttons on his shirt ping off the wooden floor of the combat room as he grabs hold of both sides and rips it apart, revealing a muscular chest and thick, corded arms that bulge with burly muscle. One of the buttons, spinning on its edge, plinks down by Xuan Shang's foot.

The mild smile on his face widens into a sharp, sarcastic grin.

"I should say the same to you."

Taking a step forward, he matches Emerson's advance.

"But a simple fight is no fun. Let's make a wager."

Emerson's self-assured smirk indicates his amusement. He folds his arms in front of his chest, leering down at Xuan Shang. "Oh yeah? Then if I win, you have to scram out of the Academy."

'I don't even want to be here in the first place...' Xuan Shang thinks helplessly.

"And if I win," he replies, "you have to follow my orders for one... hm, no, three months."

Since he likes Beris Whyte so much, let him have a taste of her medicine!

("Hah! That's my student!")

One of Emerson's followers shouts out in indignation, "You're going too far!"

"Why?" Xuan Shang says, a wicked smile on his face as he addresses Emerson, "Do you think you're going to lose?"

"Originally, I wanted to save you this humiliation, but you've brought this onto yourself." He laces his fingers together and pushes outwards, each knuckle cracking like popcorn. "So don't blame me for being discourteous."

"Oh, your friend has shown me that my thoughts were truly too lacking before. How about this... I'll let you have the first ten attacks. Let's see if that evens out the playing field, hm?"

There is a blank expression on Emerson's face, as though he cannot process the sheer absurdity of what Xuan Shang just said. The crowd seems to have the same reaction as conversations are cut off abruptly and fifty pairs of eyes turn towards the front.

As Xuan Shang anticipated, Emerson is unable to resist responding to that provocation. With a roar, he lunges forward with a kick of his powerful legs, accelerating through the air with a fist cocked backwards.

Xuan Shang bends backwards at the waist until he is parallel to the floor. The fist travels a centimeter away from his nose, the wind displaced by the blow enough to blast his hair backwards. He bares his teeth mockingly as he stares up at Emerson, who is looming above him with his fist extended, and says:

"One."

Emerson's right arm bends and drops down, the left coming towards the right in a scissoring movement to try and trap Xuan Shang in his embrace, but Xuan Shang has already slipped out from beneath Emerson's left shoulder.

"Two."

A kick that misses as Xuan Shang lunges backwards at the last second. Eyes glittering with adrenaline and excitement, he laughs and says, "Oh, so close. But that's three."

("He's so good at provoking people...")

("...Yeah. Truly your student.)

The more enraged Emerson gets, the wider and more telegraphed his swings become. Still, Xuan Shang knows that any one of those blows would fracture his bones if they landed. He can already feel his stamina flagging, and his heart begins to race too fast again. He takes a few deep breaths and forces a smirk on his face.

"Four... and five. Is that the best you can do?... Six. You know your hero is watching, right?"

Another blow.

"Seven. Or maybe you know the truth, that being my lackey is the closest you can possibly get to her. Or perhaps... eight... I overestimated your abilities. I should have given you twenty free shots."

By now, Emerson's face is bright red with rage. Xuan Shang's face, in contrast, is almost deathly white as he tries to clenches his fist over his heart, pressing down hard as if it could force back the intense spasms of pain.

Black spots flash in his vision.

This... must be from last night's wounds.

He dodges the next blow by luck as his legs give out and he stumbles. Bracing himself with one palm against the ground, he leers up at the general area where he thinks Emerson should be, a black wash slowly pervading his vision.

(Zhan Yan suddenly frowns. "There's something wrong with him. He's breathing far too quickly for the amount of movement he's done.")

("If it were his wounds, they would have bled through.")

("It's not from that. It's something else...")

"Nine," he enunciates slowly.

He sways on his feet as he forces himself into a standing position. He lets himself be backed into the corner of the stage. The plastic pail bumps against the back of his knees.

His hand slips into his pocket.

"One free shot left, Emerson."

"AAGH!"

Emerson's entire body is suffused with rage. Each muscle tenses, veins bulging, until the suppressed energy is released in a thunderous surge forwards. In the blink of an eye, he is only a few inches away.

Everything happens in a split second.

Xuan Shang grits his teeth and bursts into action. He catches hold of Emerson's wrist and uses the momentum to twist his body in the opposite direction. With the other hand, he raises the small spray bottle and presses down. A puff of golden liquid falls over his face.

Emerson's powerful punch lands squarely on the pail. The plastic bulges and finally shatters.

Small, flying bodies form an angry cloud that swarm into the air and begin aggressively landing on Emerson's face, neck, and exposed body, their buzzing growing louder in volume.

Bees.

"Get it off! Get it off!"

"...Ten."

There is an angry cry amidst Emerson's pained howls as his lackeys rush out of their seats onto the stage. One of them reaches out and grabs Xuan Shang by the collar, tight enough that it cuts off his breath.

"WHAT DID YOU DO!" he roars. He shakes Xuan Shang harder until his teeth rattle. "STOP IT! STOP IT NOW!"

Emerson's face is rapidly puffing up as the entire hive of bees madly attack. Dozens of weals grow and swell on his face.

Xuan Shang's smile is mocking.

"I gave him ten chances," he whispers. "Ten chances to hurt me, ten chances to back down. Whether he had chosen violence or mercy, if he had been competent enough, it would not have come to this."

Xuan Shang had known, when Emerson first challenged him, that this was not something he could win with his fists. He also could not back down without being looked down upon. So he borrowed some help.

He went into the woods and found a beehive. He had been stung many times before he was able to successfully capture the hive in a plastic bucket.

In the lab, he synthesized the bees' attack pheromone. It is normally produced by dying bees when their hive is under attack, stimulating other bees to wildly ravage the target. Neither water nor chemicals would wash it off.

"YOU BASTARD!"

His hands tighten over his neck.

"Yes, I am..." Xuan Shang presses down on the spray nozzle again. A burst lands on the lackey's knee. Immediately, a small section of bees break off from the main swarm and land all over him. The pain of being simultaneously stung multiple times caused him to automatically let go. Xuan Shang stumbles backwards, and with disdainful eyes, straightens his crumpled collar. "...but I'm a smart bastard."

He turns around to hide his paling expression. He feels extremely dizzy and each breath seems to take an even greater effort to draw, as though an elephant is sitting on his chest.

("Oh no - Boss? Boss! Where are you going!")

Someone in the audience yells, "Watch out!"

But it's too late.

A concussive force strikes the back of his head with enough force that he topples off the stage, and then -

.

.

.

- and then he's not in the combat room anymore but in a car dangling off the side of a cliff. Headlights burn into his eyes. There is a horrible screech of metal as a SUV smashes itself through the passenger side of his car, the metal peeling back from the assault like the petals of a grotesque flower.

His car is suspended in the air for a weightless second. It is almost as if the world holds its breath for a fraction of a heartbeat, before gravity takes hold and the entire car careens into a roll down the steep mountain, the world blurring into a dizzying array of colours. The impact snaps his neck backwards. There is an explosion of pain as it slams agains the headrest, then the airbag deploys. The world is a cacophony of sound and colour and blaring horns.

He loses consciousness for a few brief moments.

When he opens his eyes again, he is suspended by his seat belt in the air. The front of the car is crumpled like a tin can, the engine shredded backwards and slowly beginning to catch on fire. His fall had been broken by a thick tree, the front of his car folding around it at the speed of impact. But even as he watches, the trunks groans and begins to splinter. Glass dribbles down from the broken windshield.

A distant part of him recognizes that three of his ribs had snapped from the impact and were scraping against his lungs with every wheezing breath; that a piece of glass had sliced across his forehead until his entire face is coated with blood; that his right arm is bent ninety degrees backwards but is still clutching stubbornly to his cracked phone. He thinks he might be in shock. He thinks he can hear Xuan Feng's voice - but no, he would never make that kind of noise, that desperate, ravaged howl as though someone had torn apart his insides and crushed his heart into pieces. Just one word: his name.

Blood drips steadily into his eyes. Gasping for breath, his desperate gaze focuses on the rearview mirror, which is cracked lengthwise but reflects a dark figure standing a dozen meters away, watching silently as fire begins to engulf his car. He opens his mouth to call for help. The words don't come out.

Ravens wheel overhead, crying out into the darkness.

The man watches. He raises one hand to his ear.

(See?)

A hand lifts upwards. Metal gleams in the sunlight.

The tree trunk snaps.

He's not sure what ends up killing him in the end: the fall, the bullet, or the explosion.

He knows only that he falls for so long that time becomes meaningless. It could have been a minute or a day. Black fog covers his eyes. Air is forced down his throat and into his lungs.

The impact feels like it breaks every bone in his body. His body curls up, his spine bending downwards and knees curling into his chest. His shaking fingers grasp at his hair and pull it viciously, but the pain does not clear his mind.

What had just... wasn't he in the Academy? How was he suddenly in a car, unless...

...unless he had finally woken from the dream.

Only to find that he had died.

The fog around him swallows all light but does not do the same to sound. A thousand voices, young and old, make and female, thread together into a wail of despair that fades in and out of consciousness, like someone playing with the volume button of the radio. Sometimes it sounds like static, other times he can almost make out words in archaic tongues that drive him closer to madness.

And then -

A clear, cold voice, an indelible melancholy that makes something inside of him cry out.

"See?"

The black fog rapidly condenses into an environment, like a vacuum, or a horrifyingly strong attractive force.

"Remember?"

His eyes sting as vision is restored. He is kneeling on solid, compact earth. As he slowly looks outwards, he sees that it is a cliff, and there is a man sitting on the edge, his legs dangling over the abyss, a bucket by his side, a fishing rod in his hands, the line disappearing into the black fog that remains outside of this moment caught in time. His figure is hazy and indistinct, as though it exists on another level of reality and is distorted by the penetration of light waves through time and space.

"Do you understand now?" His voice is familiar yet unfamiliar, a resonance that makes his insides tremble.

"I'm... dead."

"Yes."

"It was a car crash?"

"Mm."

"My brother, is he..."

"Everyone dies eventually." The loose sleeves of his black cloak shifts down and pats the ground next to him. "Sit down. There's no need to stand on ceremony."

Xuan Shang takes a few steps forward and hesitantly sits down at the edge of the cliff, his legs curled up to his chest. Craning his neck down, he can see nothing but the endlessly whirling black fog below them, and the iridescent fishing line puncturing a hole into its depths. As the fog swirls, it almost appears to form the imprints of tortured faces, opened mouth with agony, eyes receding into a black void. A wisp of fog escapes the general masses and curls up to form a hand grasping for salvation, a plea for help.

"Take it as a lesson," the man says. Ruthlessly, he swings the rod and the line slashes through the coalescing figure, scattering it into shreds of fog again, the lingering echoes of a scream dissipating with it. "Those that will betray you are the ones you trust the most."

"If I'm dead, then are you the Reaper?"

It takes him a few seconds to realize that the sound of knives scraping against rock is laughter.

"The Reaper? No..." he replies, his tone fond and reminiscent, but also filled with a faint scorn. "Death has no dominion over me."

"Where are we?"

"Everywhere and nowhere. This is a dream. This is reality. This is your subconscious."

"Then these last few days... it was nothing more than... what, a dream? A final hallucination before my brain shuts down?"

The man is silent for some time. He watches his fishing line with a monk's ascetic patience. Then he slowly shakes his head. The first trace of hesitance seeps into his voice.

"No... that's not quite right, either. I suppose I owe you something of an apology."

Xuan Shang remains silent and waits for the other shoe to drop.

"These last few days, the apocalypse, this new body. All of it is real."

The man looks up. Xuan Shang follows his gaze to see a bird wheeling overhead - something that looks like a raven with a speckled underbelly, long tail, and red eyes. It swoops around them like a bird of prey, circling over and over.

"...And it is my fault that you are here."