Business 2

[Hidden Dimension, Realm of Mo]

"Welcome to the Underground," Huntun hopped happily past Orochi, who blinked for a second and feigned a smile despite the internal confusion in his mind about the beast king's jovial behaviour.

Beast kings were erratic, unpredictable and not that civil, from Orochi's memory. Someone dropped this red-haired beast king on his head when it was born.

In curiosity, Orochi asked him, "why do you call this the underground?"

"Kanghui said it is, so it is," came Huntun's swift reply as he skipped ahead towards the other one with his icy blue eyes several paces ahead of him.

Not quite right in the head and not that intelligent, Orochi concluded about the red-haired beast king.

However, he noticed Huntun's unusual attachment to Kanghui. Like a puppy trying to please its owner by jumping around to attract attention. Orochi's lips curled slightly in disgust.

The other, Qiongqi, refused to speak to him further, and Qiongqi's behavior is typical of a beast king. The more silent they are, the greater the danger they pose.

Orochi faced difficulty, teasing out the tangled complex dynamics between the beast kings. The two, unlike the other pair, seemed more loyal but to his knowledge, beast kings are treacherous creatures.

Kanghui still held a trump card, enough to have two beast kings remaining on her side, and Orochi wondered what it could be.

"Underground, like Earth's underworld. After the demise of our kind, deviants, fugitives and other exiles entered this realm," Kanghui's voice from behind distracted Orochi from his thoughts.

"So there are more than the usual now?" Orochi enquired, hoping to bring some information about the Realm of Mo up to date.

A corner of Kanghui's lips lifted into a smirk. "There were a lot of others."

Were. Past tense. Meaning for goners.

Orochi lifted his eyebrow at her correction in silence as he fought the urge to ask about what had happened to the others. Probably cannibalised for soul stones or maybe over territorial disputes.

"I am not the only one with a large territory in the Realm of Mo," Kanghui added, studying his expression with her piercing eyes as though sizing him up.

This is a test which Orochi won't fall for. Kanghui is pushing him to ask questions. By asking, he may slip up on revealing more information than necessary. Not falling for that.

Orochi only peddled the limited but necessary information about Alex and Yata in Mount Miwa under Ōmononushi's care and the two beast kings in pursuit.

With this information, only can Orochi secure some temporary peace with Kanghui. He deliberately omitted the information about splitting two clones out from himself. Less she knew about his weakness, the better.

Every decision Orochi made must come with a cost-benefit. A rule he set for himself. No such thing as a free lunch in the hidden dimension.

His survival instincts pushed him to talk about the incident of the two other beast kings, whom Kanghui called Taowu and Taotie, on his mountain, despite his preference not to reveal too much information.

Orochi needed to get on Kanghui's good side, or at least seem like he is on her side.

He didn't want to fight with odds stacked against him, alone with no backup.

While surprised by her lack of emotion or any reaction when told about the two beast kings hunting Alex, he knew Kanghui has bigger things on her plate.

Her gaze, cold and pitiless, never changed in its intensity when she listened to his account of events.

Others killed meant nothing to them, especially if they were pawns. Orochi wondered if Alex was a pawn in Kanghui's bigger game. No reason to go all out to protect a human soul.

Both Kanghui and Orochi came from Royal lines of serpent houses, each with their own set of politics, where kin killing is the norm across the board in the struggle for power and supremacy.

Same like the human royal houses.

Like an old Arabic saying, he heard the humans poignantly mentioned while visiting Okuizumo from the Middle East: "I, against my brothers. I and my brothers against my cousins. I and my brothers and my cousins against the world."

To be royal and alive is to kill or be killed. That much Orochi remembered from his past as a mortal serpent. Family business in royalty involved a constant bloodshed. Old habits picked up in life were hard to get rid of after death.

Orochi followed Kanghui through the forested mountain up the incline while the other two, Qiongqi and Huntun, ran ahead of them, like eager children.

Both of them are in the same sticky situation. The Xitian Council wanted to capture her. Takamagahara, if they find out about his escape, will attempt to recapture him. Better to cooperate for a moment in time, or at the minimal least, look like he is cooperating.

Silence filled the atmosphere as the two hiked their way up the rocky path and everything stayed still except for the occasional winds. Leaves danced in the dusk, light lancing through the trees.

The path took a snaking bend around into a huge cavern with its entrance, a weatherworn arch made of an onyx-like stone with engravings of the same serpentine language on the walls of the entrance to the realm.

The two beast kings, in their human forms, leaned casually on the entrance wall of the cavern leisurely, while Orochi spotted the accumulated grime and dust around the cavern with the deep marks of recently yanked out vines on the walls. He wondered how long since anyone used the location.

"What do you think of it?" Huntun asked him with such casual ease, Orochi wondered if the beast king in him malfunctioned.

"Looks… big," Orochi mumbled with great unease as Huntun edged closer, only to get yanked by Qiongqi, much to Orochi's relief.

Kanghui pulled her dagger with a serpent entwined around its hilt and placed it against the air in the entrance. The crimson red eyes of the serpent entwined around the dagger glowed and a large seal across the entrance appeared, forming glowing words along a translucent web with a strange miasmic vapor.

Orochi recognised the vapor as a rare and special form of soul shearing poison, deadly to both primeval and mortal beings.

Whatever this place was, he recognised its strategic importance, despite its decrepit interior. Perhaps in its heyday, the place was a state-of-an art facility with its secrets. Possibly a military base, Orochi deduced.

Then it vanished and the two beast kings, Qiongqi and Huntun, walked in with a swagger, like they were waiting to return home.

"The security devices here only recognize me," Kanghui warned, and Orochi nodded as he walked in with her, studying the glyphs on the wall as they pass the passageways. Then he sensed another primeval being's signature.

Kanghui isn't alone with the beast kings. Who was the other? Orochi silently activated the portal device discreetly through his sleeve, while Kanghui and the rest were not looking. Always good to secure an escape route.

Just in case, Orochi figured as he glanced at his sleeve, which hide the device from sight, and quickly looked away, pretending to be interested by the surroundings.

Kanghui knew he has a device, but she didn't know where he placed the device, the type of device or who made it.

The portal device held three more activation charges to take him out and elsewhere - maybe he could go to the territories of other factions where he knew some other serpent beings, like the Nagas of South Asia.

Celestial crow technology should be able to work against other technologies available in the cosmos, Orochi reasoned. The odds look good.