rogue_5

The primordial fog shrinks back, and gloomy night becomes brightest day.

The smoke rises from the censer in spirals, standing steady on its stone platform. In the depths of its belly, the Feranmut yet slumbers. He feels that his own body has become lighter, as if he has turned into a wisp of smoke rising through a hole in the censer, floating across the heads of the Candleholders and Imperial Guards, floating past the sealed stone door of the mausoleum, floating through the skies above Baizao, towards distant lands.

He is Sui's sole proxy, born bearing the entirety of Its wrath. And so, his mission is to make humanity, make the True Lung, pay the price for betraying their gods.

Avoiding the encircling Imperial Guard, the searching Candleholders and the ensnaring Tianshis, he walks the land, alone. As the great wild hunt has proven, relying solely on the might of Feranmuts is insufficient to destroy humanity. Thus, he does not mind blending in with the crowd, twisting man's society and order to his own ends, so that he may throw all they have created into the flames.

After the hunt came hardship, with refugees and bandits milling about the land. The end of the Hundred Clan Rebellion saw the realm's treasury being squandered to near-exhaustion. The hunt was not simply for conquest or the defense of the nation. While future generations will know of it as a great feat for their benefit, in the here and now, a single thought of the True Lung first brought corpses strewn everywhere and the collapse of the ancient order. The people can not yet see any outcome of felling the Feranmuts; all they know are the bowls of plain congee they cradle, so thin you can see the bottoms through the grains.

It is amidst this chaos that a talented man made himself known.

It is said he was the heir of a cadet branch of the House of Yan, that his family gave their all during the hunt, with him as the sole survivor. He could easily have coasted on his family's prestige to live the easy life of royalty, but instead chose to live among his fellow refugees, toiling alongside them. When bandits came, he was the first to step forward. When food was given out, he gave himself the last portion. In time, the refugees' admiration for him grew, and they elected him their leader.

The bandits he had fought became his followers, and the mandarins he had negotiated with became his friends. His entourage grew and grew, until the court began to panic, afraid that it would become the source of the next great turmoil. However, the mandarins soon discovered that those who followed him were returning home, their arms laden with grain and gold. This rapid expansion of his ranks quickly became an endless contraction. Finally, the eccentric hero called upon many of Yan's Secretaries of Administration, where he essentially soothed the populace on behalf of the court, turning the budding unrest into the prelude of prosperity. And so, once he had seen the last group of refugees home, the court summoned him to Baizao.

Decades later, this great talent had become a trusted advisor to Yan. After the former True Lung passed, the succeeding True Lung depended on his decisions for many things. The court itself was full of his disciples and former followers, the crown prince was his humble student, many high mandarins of the Six Ministries were great admirers of him in his youth, and quite a few commanders at the borderlands once traveled with him across the land, braving death together. All of Yan, from the literati and bureaucrats above to the common folk below, and all the other outstanding talents of the nation, approved of his abilities and merits. After all, a man like him, who could wield both pen to compose poetry and sword to battle the evil spirits, a man of inordinate versatility, shows up less than once a century in Yan.

And thus, when the True Lung was nearing death on his sickbed and composing his will, this man was chosen as successor before even the crown prince. As the True Lung saw it, the man had never wed, and had no children to succeed him. While tutoring, he treated the crown prince as his own child. Perhaps this was all to dispel the True Lung's doubts, to prove he had no ambitions for the throne. That in time, when he himself passed, the imperial crown would return to the True Lung's bloodline.

And so, after the True Lung passed, he wore the crown of the emperor. He once had many titles, but none were important. From then on, the people knew him as the True Lung. And when he proclaimed he would perform the rite of Feng Shan—a rite to pay homage to heaven and earth—at the Garden of Grotesqueries, newly constructed outside Baizao, all of Yan bowed to his will.

Now, he needs only to think it, and Yan could be sent into unending decay. He could make the machinery of government too bloated to function, or light a new fire in the belly of the people, ultimately casting the land into chaos. He could call in Yan's neighbors to be his accomplices, or use endless Catastrophes as his most perfect weapon. Yes, with but a thought, Yan could be razed to the ground, and Sui could complete Its vengeance, enslaving humanity once more.

All this, with a single thought in the True Lung's mind.