Chapter 604 - 600 – THE TIGER WHO HOLDS NO GRUDGE, THE WHITE CAT IN THE PRINCESS’S ARMS, AND THE REACTOR THAT MUST NOT BE DISMANTLED

The silence at the bottom of the crater lasted a long time.

Not a tense silence. More like the silence after a storm ends, when everyone is still not sure the wind has truly stopped. Marble dust slowly settled on the floor, the purple light from the magic circle had gone out entirely, and all that remained was the soft glow of the golden veins in the stone walls, which now looked far calmer than before.

Baihu was still standing, but its legs trembled. Its giant body, which had snarled and roared moments ago, was now like an old house propped up for years whose pillars had just been removed. It drew a long breath. Then another. Each breath sounded like someone just learning that air could be inhaled without pain.

Hua Chen still knelt not far away. He had not yet bandaged his bloodied palms, and he didn’t dare lift his head. An emperor who had kept this secret in his chest for years now didn’t know what to do with his two empty hands.

’Hua Chen.’

The telepathic voice was soft and hoarse. The Emperor flinched as if whipped.

"Yes, Baihu."

’Lift your head. I am very tired, and I do not wish to speak with a bowed head.’

Hua Chen slowly raised his face. Baihu’s pale golden eyes looked down at him, and Sylvia, standing some distance away with her arms folded, watched every change in both their faces. With True Sight, she no longer saw a thread of hatred between them. What remained was something tangled and old, like a rope that had been tied for far too long.

’I once hated you,’ Baihu said quietly. ’The first years. I counted the days, then counted my hatred, and eventually forgot which was greater.’

"I won’t blame you..."

’Listen first.’ Baihu snorted softly. ’I am too tired to interrupt, so you must not interrupt either.’

Hua Chen closed his mouth.

’I watched what you did with this land. I watched the survivors I protected on the first day turn into villages, villages into cities, cities into a kingdom. I watched children born beneath the walls you built with my strength. I hated you for your lie, Hua Chen. But I could not hate those children. And I could not pretend the world you saved did not exist.’ Its breathing sounded heavy. ’It makes sense. What you did, I can understand. Millions of lives are indeed more than one tiger. I will not lie and say I would not have made the same decision in your place.’

"Baihu..."

’But making sense does not mean it was right,’ Baihu continued. ’You should have come to me and asked. I would have given it. I came down from the heavens to protect you, you know? You did not need to chain me for it.’

That sentence fell like a stone into still water. Hua Chen’s face changed. For the first time, Sylvia saw a Tier Eight mage, founder of a kingdom, Emperor of Tianhua, truly shattered before a single simple sentence.

"I..." His voice broke. "I didn’t dare ask. I was afraid you would refuse."

’That was your mistake.’ Those golden eyes closed briefly. ’But I no longer have the strength for vengeance. Consider us even, on one condition. Never again regard another creature as a price worth paying.’

Hua Chen prostrated himself until his forehead touched the stone. "I swear, by the name of Hua and by my own blood."

’No blood this time. An ordinary oath will do.’ There was an almost inaudible note of amusement in that voice. ’I have learned that blood in the hands of the Hua tends to turn into chains.’

Tianyu stifled a laugh that turned into a cough, and Zhaoyue bit her lower lip to keep from smiling amid her tears. Sylvia, on the other side of the crater, raised an eyebrow and snorted softly. She had never expected the sacred tiger to have a sense of humor.

Baihu looked at them all again. All its strength seemed drained. Its heavy eyelids nearly closed, and the golden life thread in Sylvia’s eyes, which had blazed brightly when the last chain broke, now flickered weakly, not in danger, just like a very tired flame.

’I wish to sleep,’ it murmured. ’It has been so long. I have even forgotten what sleeping without pain feels like.’

"Sleep," Zhaoyue whispered. She stood beside the tiger’s foreleg, one hand still against its cold fur. "We’ll keep watch."

’You are a good child.’

Soft white light enveloped that giant body. The black stripes on its fur gleamed once, then slowly shrank. The five-story-tall body shrank, and shrank, and kept shrinking like a candle melting upward, until it was the size of a dog, the size of a large cat, the size of a house cat.

A small white cat with thin black stripes on its back, a pair of tiny horns on its forehead, and barely visible golden script among its fur fell into Zhaoyue’s arms without a sound.

It fell asleep at once.

A brief quiet. Zhaoyue looked down at the cat on her chest, snoring faintly with its mouth slightly open. Then she lifted her head and looked at Sylvia with red eyes and a face half laughing, half crying.

"It’s... a cat."

Sylvia closed her eyes and clicked her tongue.

’A cat again,’ she thought bitterly. ’Why do all the sacred beasts in this world always end up as cats?’

’Hey!’ Sol protested from her shoulder, nearly spitting through telepathy. ’It’s a strategic disguise! I have dignity in cat form! And don’t compare me to the one who passed out in the princess’s arms!’

’You sleep on a silk pillow and ask to be petted by an elf kid,’ Noir retorted from within the shadow, half asleep. ’You have dignity like that, too.’

Sylvia could only sigh long. She looked at the scene, three Hua descendants kneeling and standing with blood on their hands, a princess hugging a sacred tiger the size of a cat, and two dragons quarreling over pride, then rubbed her face with one hand.

"All right," she said. "I have a feeling my hotpot is going to become a complicated affair."

They did not stay long at the crater’s bottom.

Hua Chen rose first. He wiped his palms on the hem of his robe, then looked at Sylvia with a face that had returned to resembling an emperor’s, though there were cracks that could never be erased.

"I must return to the capital tonight," he said. "The Council has received the signal of the broken chains. They will panic, and panicked people tend to make stupid decisions. I must be there before anyone announces something in my name."

"Your problem," Sylvia answered. "But your Second Prince and your Grand General are still guests at the governor’s mansion of your daughter. Do you want to fetch them now, or should I prepare their rooms for longer?"

Hua Chen closed his eyes for a moment. "Let them stay there a few days. Tianming needs time to think about what he did. And I need time to think about what I should do with him." He opened his eyes. "If Zhaoyue permits."

"He’s my brother," Zhaoyue said quietly. The white cat in her arms snored louder. "I won’t tell you to punish him. But I won’t let him roam free either."

The Emperor nodded. Then his gaze shifted to the holographic bracelet on Sylvia’s wrist, where Stacia’s face was still peeking out with messy hair.

"Miss Stacia," he said. "The court mages will pose a thousand questions about that reactor once they realize what now supports this island. I want someone who knows to explain it directly."

"I’m still in the core chamber," Stacia answered in the tone of someone just asked to babysit alone. "And I don’t have any other choice, do I? If one of them touches something wrong, the whole Upper District could drop three hundred meters."

"So you’ll stay?" Sylvia asked.

"A few days. I’ll explain, prepare usage instructions, and monitor stability. Then I’ll come home." Stacia yawned widely. "But I’m asking for one thing. Bring my tea home. The tea here has no spiciness at all."

"I’ll tell Brom."

Hua Chen and Tianyu left first aboard the Emperor’s small crystal ship waiting behind the stone pillars at the crater’s edge. Tianyu paused before boarding and looked at his sister hugging the white cat. He said nothing. He only nodded slightly, and Zhaoyue answered with a small, sincere smile, her first since that morning.

Sylvia watched it all from a distance. Then she called Sol with a single breath.

"Let’s go home."

’Finally!’ Sol leapt from her shoulder and swelled into a fifty-meter golden dragon. ’I can’t wait to burrow into my silk pillow. I refuse any other activity until the day after tomorrow. If anyone tells me to lift crates or dig walls, I’ll pretend to be deaf.’

"You’re a dragon."

’I’m a dragon who needs rest.’

"All right, all right."

The return to Fallen Star City was far quieter than the outbound trip. Zhaoyue sat on Sol’s back with Baihu sleeping in her lap, one hand gently stroking the cat’s white fur, her gaze blank as she looked at the sea of clouds. Noir slept in Sylvia’s shadow. Sylvia herself said nothing. Now and then she glanced at Zhaoyue to make sure the girl wasn’t suddenly crying without a sound.

She didn’t cry anymore. She was just quiet. Quiet like someone who had just shouldered something too large to fully comprehend in a single night.

They landed on the outskirts of Fallen Star City just before dawn, and Sylvia looked at the city that appeared so peaceful, its fortress wall still unfinished, like a child just learning to stand straight. They walked through the gate on foot. The guards on duty bowed deeply to Sylvia, and one of them, clearly sleep-deprived, even offered a portion of spicy monster skewers with a hopeful face.

"He’s getting nothing in return for that," Zhaoyue whispered in amusement.

"He’s just someone who knows when to be polite." Sylvia accepted it with a smile. "And I know when to accept others’ respect."

Celes was already waiting in front of the governor’s mansion in neat black armor, her cold face as usual revealing nothing. When she saw the white cat in the princess’s arms, one eyebrow rose very slightly.

"Report," Sylvia said, chewing a skewer.

"The Guard Legion has piled all its staffs and swords on the plain. The five hundred mages are quartered in barracks outside the city under Nocture’s watch. The wyverns have been fed. The crystal ships are parked in the square, next to the six old ships. Commander Lian requested that her soldiers not be separated from their superiors. I allowed it."

"Good work. And the Second Prince?"

"In the second-floor guest room." Celes paused briefly. "He refused to eat for twelve hours."

"And then?"

"Brom sent a bowl of level-two spicy hotpot." Celes’s face did not change in the slightest. "He finished three portions. Then he cried. I’m not sure whether from the spice or something else."

Zhaoyue covered her mouth to hold back laughter that nearly burst out. Sylvia merely nodded wisely.

"Hotpot really does solve many things."

Meanwhile, in the heart of the holy capital, Stacia was surrounded by forty mages who wouldn’t stop asking questions.

The magic core chamber was wide and round, its walls lined with giant crystals that now glowed silver-blue, no longer the deep red they had been a thousand years ago, as one old guard, who kept staring at the crystals like seeing a ghost, put it. In the center of the room, piercing the ceiling to the heart of the Upper District, stood a white-silver column of energy thirty meters tall. At its base was planted an anchor crystal as clear as diamond, surrounded by a black metal ring veined with white-gold. Stacia had been staring at the thing for two days, and giving the same explanation for two days to the same people with slightly different questions.

"So," asked a white-bearded court engineer, for the fifteenth time, "where exactly does this energy come from, Miss?"

"From a faraway place."

"How far is that?"

"Very far."

"Can we see the source?"

"No." Stacia smiled sweetly. "But I can explain the part that’s here."

The mages exchanged glances. Their faces were a mix of awe and frustration, the faces of people handed a key without being told where the door was. Behind them, Hua Chen stood near the door in plain black robes, letting Stacia work without interference. The Noble Council had held an emergency meeting all through last night, and the result was neat confusion. Without the Legion and without Tianming, none of them was brave enough to contradict the Emperor who had just saved their island from falling.

"All right," Stacia finally said, clapping once. "The core of it all. This device is called the Spatial Receiver. It receives energy from its source through the anchor, converts it into a form your magic network can use, then channels it to the towers. You only need to keep three things in mind. Don’t touch the black ring. Don’t dismantle the anchor crystal. And don’t, no matter what happens, try to copy the formula."

"Why not copy it?" the old engineer asked quickly.

Stacia put on the serious expression she had been practicing since yesterday.

"Because this thing is too complex. The formula inside that ring consists of thousands of interlocking, interdependent layers. If you take it apart without knowing the sequence, the layers will collide with each other, and it will very easily explode." She paused briefly, letting the word "explode" hang in the air. "And the explosion, if it happens, won’t be small. I wouldn’t dare dismantle it myself without three days of preparation. So I ask respectfully, just leave it alone. It will work undisturbed."

The mages nodded in unison, and a few of them quietly stepped back from the column of light.

Stacia hid her smile behind her hand.

What she hadn’t mentioned was far more.

She hadn’t mentioned that inside the black ring, among the thousands of formula layers, were hidden thirty-two erasure nodes that would destroy the entire structure within seconds if anyone tried to map its contents. She hadn’t mentioned that the anchor crystal was protected by a reverse-lock seal that could only be opened with Nocture’s energy signature. She hadn’t mentioned that if anyone dared to dissect the ring, the explosion waiting wouldn’t be a mere magical blast, but a spatial explosion enough to level the entire core chamber and punch a hole through the base of the Upper District. And of course she hadn’t mentioned that she had installed all of it last night before dawn while everyone slept, with a speed of hand possessed only by a scientist obsessed with the security of her intellectual property.

’Not traps,’ she thought as she checked the notes on the whiteboard. ’Just extra safeguards.’

For Stacia, as Nocture’s alchemy expert and logistics brain, knew exactly the ugliest truth about technology: it always gets copied. A kingdom grateful today might change its mind tomorrow. The Noble Council, or whoever came after, would surely try to take this thing apart to make imitations. And those imitations, if they fell into the wrong hands, could become weapons or something worse.

So she made sure that would never happen.

"Miss Stacia," Hua Chen’s calm voice broke her reverie. The Emperor was already standing beside her without her noticing. "Is there something you haven’t told them?"

Stacia’s heart nearly stopped. She turned with the most innocent smile in the world.

"Of course not, Your Majesty. I merely explained that this device is very complicated."

Hua Chen looked at her for a moment with an unreadable gaze. The Tier Eight mage then smiled faintly, and Stacia fully realized the old man would ask no further.

"Good," he replied. "I also have never trusted a thing that anyone can take apart."

After two exhausting days, the court mages were finally trained. Stacia gathered all her notes, put the shards of purple chain collected from the crater floor into a leather bag, hugged a box of marble samples with golden veins, and counted in her head what else she still wanted to study: the ancient magic circle that formed the basis of the false covenant, the composition of Baihu’s remaining holy energy in the walls, the stone pillars at the crater’s edge, and, if the Emperor allowed, the palace library’s archives on the Four Ancient Guardians.

"I’ll be back in a few weeks," she told Hua Chen. "To check stability. And maybe to loot a few books."

"The palace library is open to you."

"I know." Stacia flapped her ten wings, then vanished through the sky.

She arrived in Fallen Star City toward evening, exhausted, disheveled, with golden hair that looked more like a bird’s nest than hair, and found something far stranger than any report she had read.

In the governor’s mansion dining room, Sylvia sat at the head of the table with a steaming bowl of hotpot before her. Beside her, Zhaoyue was holding a sleeping white cat in her lap. Sol sat on a silk pillow on the opposite chair, wearing a flower garland made by the elf children. Noir clung to the shadow behind the chair, only his ears visible. And at the other end of the table, Second Prince Hua Tianming, eyes swollen, was finishing his third bowl in orderly fashion, saying nothing.

"You’re back," Sylvia said, turning. Her smile was wide. "Look who finally came down from the sky."

"I’m back," Stacia answered, dropping her bag right on the floor. "I need tea. I need sleep. I need a hug."

"All three are ready." Sylvia stood and hugged her tightly. Stacia buried her face in her sister’s shoulder and sighed long. A moment later Sylvia pulled her face back slightly, squinted, and whispered in her ear, "You didn’t put anything weird in that reactor, did you?"

"I only put in safeguards," Stacia whispered back, eyes closed.

"What kind of safeguards?"

"The exploding kind."

"I know." Sylvia laughed softly. "I just wanted to be sure."

In Zhaoyue’s lap, the white cat’s small ears twitched. A pair of pale golden eyes opened slightly, half-conscious, sniffed the air several times, then looked at the boiling pot in the middle of the table with an entirely new gleam.

’What is that?’ it murmured softly, through telepathy, only to Sylvia. ’It smells... dangerous.’

Sylvia smiled broadly, wide as a demon who has finally found a new soul to tempt.

"Welcome back, Baihu," she whispered. "Want to try?"