Chapter 12: The Blight-Wood's Bargain
The Blight-Wood wasn't entered. It enveloped them.
One moment they were on a rocky scree slope; the next, the trees closed in—great, gnarled monarchs with bark like charcoal, their branches twisted into agonized shapes. A perpetual twilight fell beneath the canopy, lit only by the eerie, pulsing glow of fungal growths on every trunk. The air was warm, damp, and tasted of copper and decay. It was dead silent. No birdcall, no insect hum. Only the occasional, wet drip of sap or condensed poison from above.
Lin held her spear in a white-knuckled grip. Borus had his hammer ready, his movements still sluggish from the Ghoul-Root's drain. Kael's eyes darted everywhere, his earlier bravado replaced by a rat-like wariness. Even Scholar Wen's measured pace had slowed, his staff held before him like a dowsing rod.
Feng walked behind Wen, his senses screaming. The corruption here wasn't a passive mist. It was intelligent. He could feel it brushing against his spiritual shield, probing for weakness, whispering in a language of rot and surrender. The fragment was in a state of constant, low-grade analysis, cataloging the whispers.
ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS: SENTIENT CORRUPTION FIELD. DESIGNATION: 'BLIGHT-WOOD CONSCIOUSNESS'. OBJECTIVE: ASSIMILATION OF FOREIGN LIFE PATTERNS. METHOD: SPIRITUAL DECOMPOSITION & MEMETIC REFACTORING.
Memetic refactoring. It wanted to rewrite their very nature, turn them into extensions of the blight.
They'd been walking for an hour when the first attack came. Not from a beast, but from the path itself.
The ground beneath Borus's feet softened instantly into a sucking, acidic mire. Vines the color of bruised flesh erupted from the surrounding trees, not to grab, but to spray a fine, glittering pollen.
"Shield!" Wen barked, slamming his staff down. A dome of clear, ceramic-like energy snapped into existence around the group. The pollen hit it and sizzled, eating away at the energy with a sound like frying fat. The dome visibly thinned.
The mire continued to pull at Borus. Lin stabbed her spear into the solid ground beside him, offering a hand. Kael, instead of helping, was frantically wiping pollen from his sleeve where a few grains had landed before the dome formed; the cloth was dissolving, and the skin beneath was bubbling.
Feng ignored the dome. He looked at the mire, at the vines. He saw the pattern. The Wood wasn't attacking randomly. It was testing their unity, their reactions. It was learning.
He stepped to the edge of the dome, closest to the spraying vines. He didn't raise a hand. He simply looked at them, and let the Rot-Dao principle within him resonate.
It was a greeting. A display of kinship. I, too, understand decay.
The vines hesitated. Their spraying slowed. The pollen in the air near him seemed to drift away, repelled by his aura of curated corruption.
The Wood's attention shifted. He felt it focus on him—a vast, slow, vegetative curiosity. The pressure of the probing whispers doubled, tripled. They were no longer just offers of surrender. They were… questions.
What are you? You are rot, but you are not ours. You are a moving canker. A walking plague. Interesting.
The mire released Borus. The vines retracted. The attack ceased as suddenly as it began.
Wen's dome flickered out. He was breathing heavily, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. Maintaining the shield against the Blight-Wood's concentrated assault had cost him.
Everyone stared at Feng. Again.
"It listens to you," Lin whispered, a statement of terrifying fact.
Kael clutched his bubbling arm, his face pale with pain and envy. "He's making deals with it!"
"Silence," Wen said, his voice strained but commanding. He looked at Feng with those scholar's eyes, now alight with a feverish intensity. "You communicated. How?"
Feng touched his own chest, then pointed at the nearest pulsing fungus. He didn't have the words to explain resonance, the language of shared principle.
"It sees you as part of the ecosystem," Wen deduced. "A predator of a similar niche. We must use this. Feng, you will take point. Lead us. The Wood may grant passage to one it considers… kin."
It was a logical, ruthless strategy. It also made Feng the sole interface with a sentient, malevolent forest. A sacrificial anode.
He didn't hesitate. He nodded and walked ahead of Wen, past the others. As he moved, the forest… reacted. Fungal lights brightened to illuminate a path ahead. Thorny branches creaked aside. The whispering in his mind became a constant, sibilant commentary.
Walk, little canker. Walk. Show us your purpose. Show us what you hunger for.
He led them deeper. The Wood tested him. It would make a patch of air suddenly thick with mind-numbing spores, and Feng would have to exhale a thread of his own corrosive essence to clear it. It would make a delicious-looking spirit-fruit glow on a branch, radiating pure, clean energy—a trap. Feng would look at it, and the fragment would whisper MEMETIC LURE: ASSIMILATION VECTOR, and he would walk past without a glance.
He was negotiating a maze where the walls were alive and malicious.
After another hour of this tense, silent procession, they came to a clearing. In the center was not a tree, but a massive, pulsating heart.
It was a bulbous, veined organ of plant matter the size of a cottage, rooted deep into the earth. Thick, sap-like blood pumped through visible arteries. It was the nexus of the Blight-Wood's consciousness. Around it, fused into the roots and the very earth, were skeletons—human, beast, and things in between. They weren't dead. They were incorporated. Their bones were part of the root structure, their skulls hollowed out and growing glowing moss. Their final expressions were not of agony, but of vacant, vegetative peace.
The Heart-wood.
The whispering coalesced into a single, deep, grinding voice that spoke directly into Feng's soul.
LITTLE CANKER. YOU BRING LIVING MEAT TO OUR ROOTS. A GIFT?
Feng stopped. The others halted behind him, frozen in horror at the abomination before them.
He had to answer. Not with words, but with principle. He thought of his hunger. His Dao. He projected the concept: I am a consumer. I pass through. This meat is under my protection. It is… not for your roots.
A wave of amusement, like the rustle of a million dead leaves, washed over him.
PROTECTION? YOU GUARD YOUR PREY? STRANGE CANKER. YOU HAVE STRENGTH. A SHARP ROT. WE WOULD INCORPORATE YOU. YOU WOULD MAKE A FINE GUARDIAN NODE.
An image forced itself into his mind: his body, rooted beside the Heart-wood, his arms becoming branches, his thoughts slowing to the patient, cruel rhythm of centuries, his hunger turned outward to trap others. It was a fate worse than death. It was un-becoming.
He rejected it violently, projecting his own core principle: DEVOUR. NOT BE DEVOURED. I CONSUME TRIBULATION. I WILL NOT BECOME STATIC.
The Heart-wood pulsed, considering.
THEN A BARGAIN, LITTLE FLUX. YOU HAVE A THIEF'S TOUCH. YOU STEAL THE NATURE OF THINGS. WE HAVE A PROBLEM. A METAL SNAKE HAS BURROWED INTO OUR DEEP ROOT. IT SINGS A CLEAN SONG THAT HURTS US. STEAL ITS SONG. SILENCE IT. IN RETURN, SAFE PASSAGE FOR YOU AND YOUR… PREY. AND A GIFT.
A map of the root system flashed in his mind. Deep, deep below, he saw it—a sliver of pure, silver metal, humming with a vibrational frequency that was anathema to the Blight-Wood's corruption. It was a shard of something… celestial? A fallen weapon? A piece of a broken saint's tool?
Its song was a tribulation for the Wood. And the Wood wanted him to consume it.
Feng looked back at the others. Wen's eyes were wide, translating the spiritual exchange. "It wants a task performed," Wen breathed. "A deal."
Feng nodded. He looked at the Heart-wood and projected agreement.
GO. THE PATH OPENS. DO NOT FAIL, LITTLE FLUX, OR YOU WILL BECOME PART OF THE GARDEN.
The ground at Feng's feet shuddered and split open, revealing a slimy, root-lined tunnel descending into absolute darkness. The stench of deep earth and concentrated blight poured out.
He had to go down there. Alone.
Lin stepped forward. "I owe a debt. I go with you."
Kael looked relieved he wasn't asked. Borus just shook his head, still too weak.
Wen placed a hand on Feng's shoulder. "That metal… it may be a 'Sky-Silver Shard.' A fragment of a weapon used to purge corruption millennia ago. Its pure-frequency resonance is deadly to things like the Wood. Consuming it… I do not know what it will do to you. It is the opposite of your Dao."
Feng knew. That was the point. It was a new flavor. A tribulation of purity. Of anti-corruption. His mouth watered at the paradox.
He nodded to Lin, then turned and dropped into the tunnel.
The descent was a nightmare. The roots were alive, pulsing around them. They squeezed through spaces that seemed to contract and expand. The whispering followed them, a constant pressure. Lin followed silently, her spear strapped to her back, a short knife in her hand.
After what felt like an age, they reached a vast, subterranean cavern. The air was cleaner here, but thin. In the center of the cavern, embedded in a massive, black taproot of the Heart-wood, was the source.
The Sky-Silver Shard.
It was beautiful. A sliver of liquid moonlight, about the length of a forearm, vibrating so fast it was a blur. A pure, crystalline note filled the cavern—a sound that scrubbed the mind clean, that made Feng's own corrupted energy recoil. Where its light touched the blighted roots, they shriveled and turned to inert, grey dust.
This was the ultimate test. To consume not poison, but the antidote.
Lin gasped, covering her ears. "It… it hurts to hear."
Feng approached. The shard's song was a physical force, pushing him back, scouring his skin. It felt like being washed in acid made of light. This was tribulation not of violence, but of rejection. It rejected his very existence.
He reached for it. The closer his hand got, the more his flesh smoked. The Rot-Dao within him screamed in negation.
He pushed through the pain. He had to touch it. To make contact.
His fingertips brushed the vibrating metal.
Agony. But not the agony of destruction. The agony of erasure. The shard's frequency sought to cancel out his chaotic energy signature, to return him to a state of pure, blank neutrality. It was un-making him in a different way.
The fragment inside him woke up. It did not see this as poison. It saw it as the ultimate challenge. A tribulation that attacked the concept of tribulation itself.
He didn't pull his hand away. He clamped down, his grip fusing to the vibrating metal. He opened the void within him and didn't siphon the shard's energy. He grappled with its principle.
It was a silent, invisible war in the cavern. On one side, the unwavering, purifying note of the Sky-Silver. On the other, the adaptive, devouring hunger of the Error.
Lin watched, horrified, as Feng's arm turned translucent, then began to crack like porcelain, light bleeding from the fractures. He was being unmade.
But his eyes were closed in concentration. He was learning. He was forcing his Dao to digest the indigestible.
Slowly, painfully, the shard's vibration began to falter. Its pure note gained a faint, discordant whisper—the whisper of the void. The clean light was infected with streaks of amethyst darkness and sickly green.
Feng wasn't destroying the shard. He was corrupting it with his own nature. He was turning the antidote into a new kind of poison.
With a final, silent shriek that was felt, not heard, the Sky-Silver Shard went dark. Its vibration stopped. It was now a dull, grey rod in his hand, cold and inert. Its purifying principle had been consumed, overwritten by his devouring will.
He collapsed to his knees, his arm a network of fine, glowing silver cracks that slowly faded as his body integrated the impossible. He had done it. He had eaten purity and made it part of his hunger.
The massive taproot around the now-dead shard shuddered and began to dissolve into harmless dust, the blight in it neutralized.
The Heart-wood's voice echoed down, satisfied.
BARGAIN KEPT. THE PATH AHEAD IS OPEN. YOUR GIFT: THE WOOD'S MEMORY OF THAT WHICH HURT IT.
A flood of information—not words, but sensory impressions—washed into Feng. He saw, through the Wood's ancient perception, a battle in the sky above the Marches centuries ago. A figure in white robes, wielding a spear of pure sky-silver, fighting a monstrous, shadowy dragon with scales of black jade. The spear broke. A shard fell. The dragon, wounded, crashed into the land, its blood and dying curse creating the Blight-Wood. The white-robed figure vanished.
The memory was a piece of history. A clue to the origin of the land's tribulation.
Feng stood, clutching the inert metal rod. It was now a key, a clue, and a trophy.
He and Lin climbed back up the hellish tunnel. When they emerged, blinking in the fungal twilight, the others were waiting. The path ahead was clear, the trees leaning away to form a tunnel leading out of the Wood.
"You succeeded," Wen said, his gaze locked on the dead shard in Feng's hand. "You consumed a celestial fragment. You… integrated a law of purity into a Dao of consumption. This is unprecedented."
Feng just stored the rod in his pack. He was exhausted, but thrumming with a new, strange power. His Qi felt… balanced. Not cleansed, but harmonized in its corruption. The shard's principle now acted as a stabilizer, a keystone holding the chaotic elements of his power in a tense, powerful equilibrium.
He had passed through the Blight-Wood not by fighting it, but by becoming a more compelling mystery. He had bargained with a forest of nightmares and won.
He looked at the clear path ahead, then back at the pulsating, watchful Heart-wood.
The whispers followed him one last time.
GO, LITTLE FLUX. YOUR HUNGER IS INTERESTING. MAY YOU DEVOUR THE WORLD THAT MADE YOU.
He turned and led the group out of the Blight-Wood, the scholar's eyes burning into his back, the debt-bound warrior at his side, and the taste of divine metal like a cool, sharp mint on his devouring tongue. The Marches lay ahead, and he was ready. He had just learned to eat light. What couldn't he consume?