Seed of Death

A blade had run Prince Weishi through the chest, and someone had gouged the bone from the center of his brow.

He plunged into the sea but did not die at once.

Down and down he sank, the ocean swallowing him little by little.

One hand reached upward, as though trying to grasp the light that bent through the water's surface.

But no one could catch hold of light. Below him waited only the darkness of the seabed.

Gurgle gurgle!

One bubble after another slipped between his fingers.

His vision dimmed and blurred.

Shadows closed in, their faces already impossible to make out.

"Who is it?"

"Did they kill that traitor Henir and come to rescue me?" Startled joy spread across Weishi Hosen's face as the thought flashed through his mind.

"Or... could it be those monsters?" On second thought, the monsters were far more likely. In an instant, his joy scattered into dread.

Fear swallowed him, and his consciousness went dark.

A few days later, Weishi Hosen awoke in an undersea stone grotto within the seabed city of the Sal Domain, surrounded by ancient cups. Pain woke with him, buried marrow-deep as though countless needles had pierced his body and lodged in his flesh and blood.

Ah!

An agonized scream tore from him, only for seawater to pour into his open mouth.

He was locked inside a cage of bone. Through its gaps, he took in his surroundings. This appeared to be a prison of the People of the Abyss.

His last guess had been right. The People of the Abyss had taken him captive.

"Why did these monsters leave me alive?"

He had no idea why, but nothing mattered more than being alive. While he lived, he still had a chance to turn everything around.

Looking down at his wound, he knew that with injuries so severe, he should have had little chance of surviving.

Yet the wound in his chest had already closed.

Astonished and overjoyed, he touched the healed skin over his ribs in disbelief.

"It is... healed?"

Wild delight seized him, and he immediately began planning his escape.

With contempt, he surveyed the bone cage. Were the People of the Abyss fools? How could they imagine this would hold him?

He was a senior priest of the royal line, a powerful trilobite man versed in divine techniques of every kind.

"This pathetic cage cannot hold me!"

He raised a hand, extending mental power from his mind.

The power never escaped his mind. Agony ripped through his body, and he collapsed to the floor.

In that same instant, he felt death close in.

Twisting his head around, he found the source of it all.

On his own shoulder, Weishi Hosen saw a beautiful flower cup in full bloom.

It was brilliant gold, like the light of the sun.

Now he understood why his wound had closed so quickly. The Sun Cup's mighty life force had saved him.

No joy remained in his eyes. He stared at the golden flower cup as though it were the most terrible thing in the world.

"I am finished!"

"I am finished!"

"The forbidden art... the King-Slaying Flower."

The Sun Cup planted in his own body frightened him witless.

He knew how King Yesael had died in ages past, and how the backlash had claimed Schlode, the first-generation priest of the Sky Temple.

It was all written in the Great Poet's Yinsai Epic, passed down from generation to generation by the four great families of the Royal Bloodline.

Everyone in the lands of Yinsai knew the story.

The backlash of the Sun Cup had killed Yesael, the second King of Wisdom. That same backlash had cost the trilobite men the Crown of Wisdom.

"How could this happen?"

"Damn them. Those monsters did this."

"How dare you treat me this way! How dare you!"

Terror drove Weishi Hosen to call on his wisdom ability again and again. Each time he drew on that power, the Sun Cup devoured the blood of myth within him.

The backlash was immediate.

These people had never mastered the first-generation Sky Temple priest's divine technique. Even if they had, they would never have used it on Weishi.

Instead, they had driven the Sun Cup's roots into his flesh and blood and bound it to his power by brute force.

This had been their purpose from the start. The Sun Cup would seal away Weishi Hosen's power while planting a seed of death and despair inside his body.

The woman knight of the Sal Domain of the Demon Abyss Kingdom hated Weishi Hosen with every fiber of her being. Countless members of her people and soldiers under her command had died at his hands.

She wanted him to die by her hand, in the most terrible and hopeless way possible.

When the People of the Abyss guarding the cells saw that he was awake, they touched their antennae together and sent word to the woman knight at once.

Together, they hoisted the bone cage and bore it into a cold, gloomy palace beneath the sea.

The woman knight fixed Weishi Hosen with a frozen stare. "Get down on your knees!"

Mental power crushed him flat against the floor, leaving him sprawled like an ugly worm, a pitiful insect trapped in a cage.

"Kill me!"

"Kill me now!"

Suddenly, Weishi Hosen felt he would have been better off dying before. Being alive was no stroke of fortune. His nightmare had only just begun.

The woman knight's hatred for Weishi Hosen knew no bounds. Twisting her enormous tail, she slid down and leaned against the outside of the bone cage, her blood-red eyes fixed on the prince.

"Death?"

"Oh, you will die!"

"But first, I shall watch you die in despair."

Her cold voice pressed into his mind, pitched in the same lofty tone Weishi Hosen himself had once used.

"Feel the grace I have bestowed upon you! In my mercy, I have allowed you to live a little longer."

"The Sun Cup shall devour you. Your will shall remain imprisoned within that flower cup forever, suffering for a thousand years and ten thousand beyond."

From the floor, Weishi Hosen looked up at the woman knight.

His terror had reached its limit, and so had his humiliation.

Yet at the same time, the scene felt strangely familiar.

He seemed to be looking at himself, long ago.

His chin had been raised, his bearing arrogant, as if nothing in the world were worthy of his notice.

Every punishment he dealt out had seemed no more than his victims deserved. Even the humiliation he inflicted from on high, he had regarded as a grace and charity bestowed from above.

"Perhaps... this is how Henir saw me!"

"And... and the other traitor."

All at once, Weishi wondered whether this was why they had betrayed him, one after another.

Turning her head, the woman knight addressed her soldiers.

"Bind him to the Island of the Dead. Let him suffer as the saint once suffered."

Scorn filled the woman knight's eyes as she looked at Weishi Hosen. "Once, the Great Poet Tito was bound on the Island of the Dead and left to suffer. Then the first Demon Abyss King came at God's command and set him free."

"Take a guess! Will God send His messenger to save the likes of you?"

The woman knight did not believe it for a moment. Neither did Weishi Hosen.