Chapter 183 - Heart of Darkness

For several minutes, Ao Wen stared at the massive spider and the recreation of her mother. It felt impossible that her actual mother could be in any real danger. If she had found Feng Xi here or perhaps Ma Xiaohua, she would have considered the possibility that the ritual affected those near her. Seeing her mother, however, made it painfully clear that this was only an illusion. An illusion intended to manipulate her to be sure, but knowing that it was an illusion actually made it harder rather than easier. 

She could walk away. Right now, Ao Wen considered doing exactly that. She could refuse to play the manual's sick game, ignore the dilemma before her and hunt elsewhere in the darkness. She was certain that the vision would conjure other challenges for her to face if she turned away from this one. Who was to say that the next one would be any different though? If it presented her father's face, would she walk away again? If it showed her Xi? Maybe there was wisdom in picking your battles but right now, she didn't want to walk away. Walking away wouldn't change anything, or at least, it wouldn't change anything for the better. Somehow, she felt that if she walked away from this vision, she'd set herself firmly on a path that walked away from her parents and family. They'd never know that she abandoned them in this strange vision, but she'd know. 

"You're not even real," Ao Wen muttered, looking at the captive figure of her mother. "But I still won't abandon you to this." Deep down, Ao Wen never stopped thinking of Hou Jia as her mother. The mortal woman who raised her may not consider Ao Wen to be her daughter, and Ao Wen could acknowledge that she'd become a very different person than the simple young woman her mother had raised. None of that meant that the sixteen years Hou Jia had spent raising Ao Wen hadn't happened. Hou Jia disowning her meant that Ao Wen couldn't call Turning Leaf home anymore, couldn't call the Ao family home, but it didn't mean she'd turn her back on her parents. "She might not want me to protect her, but that won't stop me if she needs me," Ao Wen promised. "Even if it's fake, it doesn't change who I am or what I need to do."

The question was, what did she need to do? Slay the giant Dark Weaver Spider? Rescue her captive mother? Both? Her hands itched when she gazed on the massive arachnid, her blades all but begging to be put to use dismantling the venomous beast. Killing it would put an end to her problems, one way or another. The problem was that Hou Jia was mortal. In a collision of energies between a cultivator and a powerful spirit beast, it was all too easy for nearby mortals to die in the clash. If she wanted to save her mother, she'd have to spirit her away first. 

Despite the cover of darkness, Ao Wen was certain that the Dark Weaver Spider's vision was just as good as hers, if not better. No matter what she did, a frontal assault would end in failure. "Fighting head on was never the point for these people anyway," she thought. "If I can get around behind the tree, I have a chance." 

Slowly, Ao Wen withdrew back into the forest, just far enough to put a few trees between herself and the massive spider. Now more than ever, Ao Wen wished she'd made enough progress in the Obsidian Night Scorpion Saber Art to use Hidden Night Steps to move around the forest. The ability to blend with darkness and move unseen was exactly what she needed now. When she reached out to the dark of night to blend with it, however, she found her skill still lacking a fundamental piece of understanding. 

All around her, darkness flowed like the cold breath of the grave. She didn't even need to see the pile of mangled corpses to know that the darkness held a pit of tortured souls. She didn't have to see the massive Dark Weaver Spider to feel its oppressive malevolent aura as it waited patiently in the center of its web, biding its time for Ao Wen to deliver herself up as its next meal. Darkness robbed of her sight but there were so many other things pressing against her senses that even if she couldn't see in the dark, she would still have methods to navigate it. 

Suddenly, as she crept through the night to reach the opposite side of the clearing, she realized why she couldn't ever grab hold of the darkness to slip within it. "I'm in the darkness," she said quietly. "But the darkness isn't in me."

All around her, darkness flowed like water and Ao Wen moved through it like a boat on the sea. She drifted through it, hid in it, but she kept it away from herself. Trying to float along on top of the darkness would never be enough. If she didn't let it in, she'd at best be a boat on the surface of a vast dark ocean but she would never reach its depths. "This darkness isn't my darkness though," Ao Wen insisted. "I don't have to let the darkness of the world saturate me, I need to fill myself up with my own darkness."

Slowly, Ao Wen took the risk of concealing herself among the roots of a larger Darkwood tree and closed her eyes. She imagined herself as a bottle, floating on the surface of the sea. Into the bottle, she poured her best memories, thinking of the ways she'd found comfort in the darkness. 

Qi Yue came to mind before Feng Xi. In her first year living as Yu, she'd often suffered from nightmares. Qi Yue could easily have conjured a flame to chase away the darkness but she never had. Instead, she'd enveloped Cong Daiyu in a warm embrace, letting the younger woman bury her face in her soft bosom and whispering reassurances into her ears until she managed to fall back asleep. 

She remembered her father, sitting up late with her at night to watch dark storm clouds roll in over the Thundercloud forest. Lightning had split the night and thunder shook the shutters of their home, but Ao Yang had never left her side. The lightning strikes had terrified her but in between the lightning, there had been soft darkness and the sound of falling rain. Her father had held her in strong arms until she fell asleep or the lightning stopped falling. Those had felt like the best moments, when she endured the whole thunderstorm with her father until only darkness and rain remained along with his strong comforting presence. 

Steadily, she filled herself with a different kind of darkness. It was a darkness that welcomed and enveloped her, making her one with the night itself.