Arlo stirred back to consciousness, mind swimming. "What was her name again?" he wondered. "Did I even have a name?" He blinked as a distant bell tolled, signaling the continuation of the court session.
People began gathering around the throne. King Yi strode forward and sat upon the throne. The chancellor, a towering man named Gin, raised a hand to quiet the crowd.
"Dear citizens," Gin announced, his voice echoing through the chamber. "The rules are simple. Our Seer will make a gesture, and you must guess its meaning. When someone answers correctly, we will proceed." Gin stepped forward, kneeling before the Seer Lady. Because of his great height, he bowed very low. "Lady, may you give us the gesture so that we may continue?" he asked respectfully.
The Seer Lady, bound by rigid determination, tightened her grip on the armrests of her throne. She gave a slight nod of permission. Then she began her mysterious motions, waving a slender hand in the air in a subtle pattern.
People excitedly shouted guesses:
"Sun!""Wolf!""Duck!" and all manner of wild answers.
Someone yelled "Tree!", but the Lady shook her head in negation. The crowd buzzed with speculation. While others remained engrossed in the guessing game,
Arlo quietly slipped away from the hall. He wandered the castle corridors, finding ways to avoid the numerous guards. After a time, he stumbled upon a secluded room. Muffled whispers and odd noises seeped through the crack of the closed door. Curiosity piqued, Arlo pressed his ear to the door.
Inside, he heard the sounds of passion. He gently knocked on the door three times. No one answered. He tried again, firm and deliberate, but still there was no response. Frustrated, Arlo raised his foot and kicked hard. The room exploded into chaos.
Inside, a young woman scrambled beneath the bed, and a guard stood upright, stark naked and glaring at Arlo with wide eyes. The guard, clearly caught off guard, quickly opened the door.
"Hey, kid, do you know who I am?" the guard barked, trying to sound intimidating. Arlo calmly stood on tiptoe to get a better look at the man in front of him. He noted telltale signs of the guard's scandal: rumpled sheets, discarded clothing on the floor, and a trickle of wax from a guttering candle.
The guard's face turned red. He scowled and yelled, "Hey, you son of a bitch, speak to me, or are you deaf?!"
Arlo smiled innocently. "Sorry," he said smoothly, "I thought you were having a seizure." He continued to scan the room with his eyes, looking for an opening. And there it was: the guard's coat and trousers.
The guard, oblivious as he stood like a baffled hippopotamus, simply kept shouting. Arlo shifted his gaze slyly to the wall behind the guard. "It looks like the naked lady is trying to tell you something," he quipped, pointing up at the empty wall.
The guard recoiled as if something had slithered across his skin.
Seizing the moment, Arlo lunged forward, snatched the guard's coat and boots, and dashed out of the room. The guard, caught off guard in the buff, did not give chase.
Moments later, Arlo crouched in a shadowed alcove, hastily pulling on the stolen uniform. He checked himself in a polished metal surface: the dark tunic fit and the boots tightened.
Once disguised, he emerged onto the corridor, walking with newfound confidence. One hallway led into another. No one stopped him; people only gave him a quick glance or a polite bow as he passed.
Then someone blocked his path. A deep, commanding voice called out, "Wait!" Arlo halted and looked up. A tall man with a stern aura and piercing eyes stood before him. He looked every bit the high-ranking cultivator he was rumored to be. Arlo snapped to attention. "Sir," he greeted crisply.
The man stepped closer, studying Arlo intently. "Are you the man I expected?" he asked quietly. Arlo kept his posture rigid, like a soldier. "Yes, sir. I seem to have lost my way," he replied calmly.
The man nodded once. "You can call me Cho Jinxa," he offered. "You look new here. I'll lead you." With that, Cho Jinxa turned and began walking.
Arlo followed. Cho Jinxa led him to a heavy wooden door set into a stone wall. Standing before it, Cho Jinxa gave one last instruction: "Hurry up. This time we must succeed." He pushed the door open and motioned Arlo through. The door closed with a thud behind Arlo.
The chamber beyond was dim and cold. Only a sliver of moonlight sliced through a barred window high on the wall, casting faint shadows. Arlo's eyes adjusted. On a low stone dais lay a motionless boy, a teenager with pale skin and white hair.
Arlo's breath caught. This was the First Prince – long thought lost in a coma. Yet now the prince's body glowed softly, and the air around him was unnaturally frigid. A cold breeze bit Arlo's legs through his clothes, and he shivered involuntarily.
Arlo's heart sank. He knew the order had been to kill this boy. But looking at the frail child, confusion filled him. "What is this chillness? A special constitution?" he whispered to himself, as much in recognition as fear. The prince was helpless, a mere kid. "How did they fail to kill this frail child?" he murmured, horrified.
Suddenly, Arlo smelled something foul. The stench of rot and old blood assaulted his nostrils. He followed the scent to a spot against one of the chamber walls. Arlo crouched down and inched closer, nose near the cold stone.
A gnarled, withered old hand burst through the wall, reaching toward his neck. Arlo let out a startled cry. His vision blurred; a searing pain shot through his limbs. "Help! Help me! Someone, help me!" he tried to shout, but his own voice sounded distant and like he was experiencing a sleep paralysis.
Everything went black.
When Arlo came to, he realized he was lying on his back. A low, flickering light danced on the walls. He felt strangely warm below him. He slowly raised his head and coughed. His body felt weightless, as if he were floating. The hazy glow revealed a terrifying sight: he was lying on a burning pyre. The flames had scorched his legs and hips, but now they were dying down.
From this angle, Arlo noticed something gruesome on the wall behind him. The scribbled outlines of a huge pentagram were drawn in thick, dried blood. Until now he had been too dazzled by darkness to notice. A cold dread twisted in his gut.
Suddenly, a goat's scream echoed in Arlo's mind. His ears rang and a pressure built up behind his eyes. Blinking frantically, he saw it: above him in the central triangle of the blood-pentagram hovered the severed head of a goat. Its eyes were open in shock, black blood dripping from its neck into the fire below. The other four triangles each held a dismembered goat leg, and the bottom triangle held a goat tail.
Before Arlo could react, a face formed in the wall above the pentagram. It was the old woman he had seen on the street that morning—the crone who had fixed Arlo with a gaze earlier. Her eyes were empty, yet somehow filled with terrible knowledge.
"You... you are a witch," Arlo managed to whisper, though he knew it was hopeless; she was already in his mind.
The witch on the wall merely smiled a toothless grin. Arlo's mind raced. He knew she could read him. He snatched at control: he activated his neural interface, the Anima Index, using the last of his energy. On the surface, he tapped random commands. He was sending gibberish, hoping to confuse her mind.
Behind the noise, he hid a plea for help. Desperation clawed at his thoughts. "Connect me to the mainCGSserver!" he virtually screamed. The CGS server was the vault of all knowledge—chants, rituals, use of orders, and forbidden techniques. If he could access it, he might find something to save himself.
A holographic console flickered into existence before Arlo's eyes. He watched lines of ancient code scroll past. Then a message appeared: "ACCESS DENIED. Someone with equal authority is rejecting the use of the main server."
Arlo's face twisted in rage. He realized with a sickening certainty, "They betrayed me. Seven seals have betrayed me," he thought fiercely. Every move had been a trap to lure him here, orchestrated from start to finish.
He closed his eyes and took a ragged breath. Anger would not save him now. He had one last idea.
Arlo remembered an emergency plan: "I'll try one last thing," he resolved silently. "I'll use anelectromagnetic fieldto transfer my memories into my clone." If his consciousness could escape into a clone body, he might survive.
He commanded his interface, trying to ping the clone's location. For a moment he saw lines of energy swirl. Then Arlo's expression crumpled. "Shit! What? How can this happen?" he gasped. The signal was gone. His clone was dead — gone without a trace. The last lifeline snapped.
Arlo slumped onto the cold stone. The flames still smoked beneath him, and the air was heavy with the nauseating stench of charred flesh. Around the pyre, ghostly figures emerged: young women stripped naked, but all headless. They danced in a slow, lilting circle around the fire, chanting in an unknown, eerie tongue.
Arlo blinked away tears of smoke. He ended the hacking interface. It was useless now.
He had only one hope left: answers.
Arlo crawled forward on the pyre, each movement sending pain through his burned legs. He looked at the old witch in the wall. Gathering what strength he had, he spoke one question, voice low but steady: "Can you see the past?"
The old witch's grin widened. She nodded and replied in a raspy voice, "Yes, I can." Her eyes glinted in the firelight.
Arlo felt his throat burn with dryness. He coughed. Smoke filled his lungs. The witch stepped down from the wall, slowly approaching him. She seemed to sense his weakened state and said nothing more.
Arlo crouched on the burning logs, gathering the last of his will. "I will ask only three questions," he declared, trying to sound authoritative. "First: What happened to the girl named Hua Xiaolian?"
The old witch's head tilted. She laughed, a harsh, broken sound. "Why are you asking about someone dead?" she crooned.
"Just give me the answer!" Arlo snapped, teeth gritting.
For a moment, the witch said nothing but cocked her head, as if savoring his desperation. Then she sneered, "She committed suicide after her sect fell."
Arlo's eyes went cold. The truth was not a surprise, but hearing it still knifed him.
He forced himself to speak the second question: "Second question: Who ordered my death?"
The witch clapped her gnarled hands once. "You are indeed smart," she hissed. "It wasHeavenwho contracted your death. Do you want to know why?"
Arlo's shoulders shook from the heat of the flames. His mind raced through snippets of conversations with itself: a hushed voice asking, "What will happen to those temporary 'death gods'?" followed by a sneer, "Hm, none of our concern. We recruited them with illusions from the start." Another voice: "And what about that blind, mute lady outside?" ... "It's none of our concern either."
It clicked for Arlo. They had used illusions and pawns at every step—all to trap him. Hua Xiaolian's story was bait.
He met the witch's gaze through the haze of smoke. Flames clung to his skin; chunks of charred flesh peeled away. He saw his own muscle sizzling and heard each tiny pop. His blood boiled, yet he felt nothing — the tiny implants of his Anima Index had severed all pain signals.
He managed a twisted smile. In the firelight, his eyes glinted with fury. "Can you see the future?" he challenged, his voice a rasp that echoed in the hall.
The old witch's face blanched, and she took a shaky step back.
Behind Arlo, the blood pentagram on the wall glowed a fierce crimson. The goat's head writhed as if alive. Smoke swirled around him like living shadows.
In that infernal blaze, Arlo started to burn his soul to create the Anima.
The witch's expression changed.
For the first time, she looked unsure.
Arlo looked at the fire and said quietly, "I see. So that's my name."
His Anima Index reacted. It was not just Arlo who wanted to survive; it was Anima Index as well that wasn't ready to die.
[Creating a new technique.]
[Phoenix: Rebirth]