The remainder of the journey through Fengdu was, to Nicholas's growing disappointment, uneventful.
Wang Sanfeng led the boy's soul through winding streets and across bridges that arched over rivers of yellow water, pointing out landmarks and offering explanations in the warm, patient tone of a guide who had performed this duty a thousand times before. But the substance of his words was thin—the kind of information that a child would find wondrous and that a God-Emperor found utterly trivial.
"This is where you will stay," the messenger said, stopping before a small house nestled between a modern apartment building and an ancient courtyard. It was modest but well-kept, its walls freshly painted, its windows clean, its door carved with symbols that Nicholas recognized as characters for "peace" and "rest." "The City of the Dead provides shelter for all souls who come here. It is not grand, but it is comfortable. You will want for nothing."
The boy's soul pulsed with something that might have been gratitude. "Thank you. It's... it's very nice."
Wang Sanfeng smiled, his tusked face softening. "You will have time here, little one. Time to rest. Time to remember. Time to decide what comes next." He reached into his robes and withdrew a small bundle of paper—thin, crisp sheets that rustled as he handled them. "This is paper money. It is what we use here, in the underworld. You will need it for many things—for food, for comforts, for the small luxuries that make existence pleasant."
The boy's light flickered with confusion. "Paper money? But... it's just paper."
"It is paper in the world of the living," Wang Sanfeng agreed. "But here, it is more. When the living pray for their ancestors, when they burn offerings at shrines, when they remember those who have passed and wish them well—that intention, that love, that memory, becomes this." He held up the bundle, and Nicholas could see, with his fragment-senses, the faint glow that clung to each sheet. Faith energy, condensed into physical form. "It arrives here as paper money, and it is what sustains us. What allows us to exist in this realm without fading."
The boy considered this. "So... the more people remember you, the more money you have?"
"In part," Wang Sanfeng said. "But one can also condense it oneself, through meditation, through the slow accumulation of one's own merit. It is not easy—it takes time, patience, discipline. But it can be done. Most souls do a little of both. They rest, they remember, they slowly build their own reserves. And when they are ready, when they have enough, they choose what comes next."
He pressed the bundle into the boy's soul—the light of it seemed to absorb the paper, drawing it in, making it part of itself. "This will get you started. Enough for a few weeks, at least. After that, you will need to find your own way. But do not worry—there are always ways. The City of the Dead provides for those who seek."
---
Nicholas watched all of this with half his attention. The other half was already elsewhere.
The economics of the dead were interesting, in a theoretical sense. The use of paper money as a physical manifestation of faith energy was clever—a way of turning the formless into the tangible, of creating a currency that could be stored, traded, spent. It was another example of how the East had refined the crude mechanisms of faith into something more sophisticated.
But Nicholas was not interested in currency. He was interested in power.
Where were the Yama Kings? Where were the judges, the guardians, the great cultivators who had achieved the Yang Spirit and ascended beyond the need for faith entirely? Where were the beings that Odin had spoken of with such fear, the ones who had shattered the world and then retreated behind a veil that even a Dominator of Magic could not pierce?
The boy's soul was not going to lead him to them. A ten-year-old, newly dead, freshly arrived in the underworld, was not going to be granted an audience with the Ten Yama Kings. He was not going to be introduced to the great cultivators of the Corpse Liberation Sect. He was not going to be shown the inner workings of the celestial bureaucracy that Nicholas needed to understand.
He was going to be given a small house and a bundle of paper money and told to rest.
This was not enough.
Nicholas pulled back, his fragment-senses dimming, his consciousness retreating from the boy's soul. He had learned much—more than he had in ten years of animal avatars and scattered observation. He had seen the Six Realms. He had witnessed the mechanics of reincarnation. He had observed a Ghost Immortal up close, had traced the causal threads of his existence back to the cultivation techniques that had shaped him.
But he had not penetrated the veil. He had not reached the immortals, the true powerhouses of the East. He had not seen the inner workings of the celestial hierarchy that Odin had described. He had only glimpsed the outermost layer of a system that had been refined over millennia.
He needed a new approach.
The animal avatars had been too limited. Their senses were weak, their lifespans short, their ability to gather meaningful intelligence almost nonexistent. The human vessels—the bloodline he had been cultivating for a decade—had been better, but they were still mortal. They lived, they died, they reincarnated, and in the process, they lost the thread that Nicholas needed to follow.
He needed something that could persist. Something that could grow. Something that could, over time, accumulate enough power and access to reach the inner circles of Eastern cultivation.
He needed to use the wheel itself.
The mechanics of it crystallized in his mind with the clarity of a Fate-weaver calculating probabilities across centuries. The boy's soul would rest in Fengdu. It would heal. And when it was ready, it would choose to reincarnate—to return to the world of the living, to be born again into a new body, a new life, a new chance. That was the law of the Six Realms. That was the wheel that turned for all souls.
But where a soul reincarnated was not random. It was determined by the weight of its deeds, the accumulation of its merits. A soul that had lived a good life, that had accumulated positive karma, would be born into favorable circumstances. A family of status. A life of comfort. A body with the spiritual root that made cultivation possible.
A soul that had been guided, subtly and carefully, toward good deeds—that had been shaped, over the course of its existence, to walk the path of virtue—would reincarnate into exactly the kind of family Nicholas needed to reach.
He would guide them. Not directly—that would be too obvious, too easily detected by the watchful eyes of the Eastern immortals. But subtly. A nudge here, a whisper there. A dream that planted a seed of generosity. A moment of insight that revealed the consequences of a selfish act. A feeling, deep and unshakeable, that the right path was the one that helped others.
He would use his authority over Fate, thinned across the metaphysical barrier but still present, still potent, to shape their destinies. Not to control them—that would defeat the purpose, would create souls that were puppets rather than vessels. But to guide them. To ensure that the choices they made, freely and of their own will, were the ones that accumulated merit. That built karma. That would, when the wheel turned, place them in families with divine ancestry, with spiritual roots, with access to the cultivation circles that Nicholas needed to penetrate.
And when they reincarnated—when their souls were born again into new bodies, new lives, new chances—his fragment would go with them. Not as a parasite clinging to the outside, not as an observer hiding in the shadows. But as part of the soul itself. Integrated. Indistinguishable. Hidden so deeply within the fabric of their being that even the Yama Kings, even the great cultivators who could see the threads of a soul's past lives, would not find it.
The boy in Fengdu would rest. He would heal. And when he was ready, when his soul had absorbed the lessons of his too-short life, he would choose to return. Nicholas's fragment, hidden in the deepest folds of his being, would go with him. And in the next life—in the life that Nicholas would guide, subtly and carefully, toward good deeds and accumulated merit—the boy would be born into a family with spiritual roots. Would be discovered by a master. Would learn to cultivate.
And Nicholas would be there, watching from within, finally able to see.
The other fragments—the thousands he had seeded across the East in animals and bloodlines and scattered vessels—would receive the same guidance. Each one, in its own time, would be shaped. Each one would accumulate merit through good deeds, through kindness, through the slow, patient work of building positive karma. And each one would reincarnate into a family that could carry Nicholas's fragment deeper into the cultivation world than he had ever been able to reach.
It would take time. Decades. Perhaps centuries. But Nicholas had time. He had all the time in the world.
He began to work.
From his throne in the Luminous Court, his vast form wrapped around the World-Mountain like a blanket of stars, he reached out. His authority over Fate stirred, and the threads that connected him to every fragment he had seeded across the East began to shift. He did not command. He guided. A slight adjustment here, a subtle redirection there. A mother found herself teaching her child the value of sharing. A father chose to forgive a debt rather than demand payment. A young woman gave up her seat on the bus to an old man, and felt a warmth in her chest that she could not explain.
Small things. Tiny things. The kind of choices that, made a thousand times over a lifetime, shaped a soul's history. The kind of choices that, when the wheel turned, determined where a soul would be born next.
The boy in Fengdu slept, his soul resting, his fragment waiting. The other fragments, scattered across the East in a thousand vessels, began their slow work of accumulating merit. And Nicholas, the God-Emperor of the West, the Weaver of Fate, the Dominator of Magic, settled into the longest patience of his existence.
He would follow them through the wheel. He would be born again and again, hidden in souls that he had shaped toward goodness. And one day, when the time was right, when the karma was sufficient, when the spiritual roots were strong enough, he would finally see what lay behind the veil.
To be continued...
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