He had heard that the universe's master had once helmed the six realms with an iron fist. - Pillow Book 2, Chapter 7

Wordcount: 4,773

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Heavenly Realm - Jiuchongtian - early morning

Third day since Fengjiu died.

Gungun ---------------------------------

The day his mother died had been frantic, bizarre and time had passed far too quickly.

The next day when they returned to Xiwu Palace, it had been dreamlike, fuzzy and unreal.

Today was the third day since his mother had passed, and there was a strange stillness in the air. As if the entire world was waiting for something momentous to happen. But that might just be Gungun's own fatigue bearing down on him, he had not really slept the past few days.

Gungun's great uncle-in-law Ye Hua had been very busy.

Uncle Ye Hua had left Xiwu Palace a few minutes ago and had brought A-li with him. Star Lord Tian Shu had asked for his help with a matter of a confused and panicked heavenly patrol coming across a 'giant monster' at the banks of Ruoshui, the border between the Heavenly Realm and the Ghost Realm.

Gungun's aunt Bai Qian had also just requested Nai Nai go leave on an errand.

This meant Gungun was currently helping his aunt Bai Qian take care of the two babies. One of these was his aunt's youngest son, Bai Fuzan; who at only three years old was practically newborn in immortal terms. Having just been fed Fuzan had fallen asleep a few minutes ago and was contentedly sleeping in his crib.

The other baby was Gungun's very tiny, and very much still awake little sister Bai Xueyu.

The evening before they'd returned to Jiuchongtian Xueyu had been awake and crying, never sleeping for more than half an hour at a time unless in someone's arms. If he placed her in a crib, within half an hour she would wake up wailing and crying, as if from nightmares. He knew from his research this was not very good for newborn babies to be waking up so frequently, or sleeping so little.

Due to Mi Gu's barrier, they had needed to exit the Fox Den in order to teleport back to Xiwu Palace. When he had stepped outside, dusk was settling, and the stars of Qing Qiu were making their appearance. This was when Xueyu had stopped crying and after only a minute of blurrily looking at the stars, she'd fallen asleep.

So Gungun had been focusing his attention on trying to solve this problem. He had spent the day yesterday trying every non-magical means of attempting to help Xueyu settle, to no avail. It was honestly upsetting, he'd never really failed at anything before. This wasn't something he was doing just to sate his curiosity or test his mind or skill, this was important.

He'd come to the conclusion that although the research he'd compiled was accurate, he'd focused on learning and understanding the wrong things. He'd catalogued and researched what babies did, their development milestones, sleep cycles, nutrition, genetics, the nature of souls and other things, but he'd not considered what was actually required to take care of one.

This caused him no small amount of mild panic because he had to face the fact he was utterly unprepared to care for a baby; especially not one as tiny and fragile as his little sister Xueyu. He'd been so proud and confident only a few days ago, this was a truly humbling experience.

He was immensely grateful his uncle Ye Hua, aunt Bai Qian and her personal maidservant Nai Nai had experience of such things, and were taking care of Xueyu perfectly while he scrambled to learn.

He consoled himself that he'd not been completely useless during the past two days. For some reason both babies were very content to settle and sleep in his arms when he held them, and his extensive knowledge of lullabies proved useful in making the babies sleep.

Because of his voracious reading, he already knew almost every story, poem and lullaby from every race, tribe or clan that had ever written them down. He'd found them useful for understanding a race's development of language, culture, history, values and morals. He found the practical application of this knowledge quite satisfying.

He was quite grateful his little sister was creating these problems that needed solutions, it meant he had an excuse to focus on doing something that was useful and necessary, that absolutely was not simply him distracting himself from the current reality, not at all.

His aunt Bai Qian was currently holding the fussing, whimpering, very tired Xueyu while Gungun focused on creating something he hoped would help.

He was on the other side of the room, a safe distance away that even the tiniest wisps of magic would not reach Xueyu. Not that such a thing would occur anyway, he was just being extra cautious. His control of his considerable power and magic was exceedingly precise; this had allowed him to learn many techniques that only High Immortals could manage.

He'd initially been frustrated at having to resort to magical means, and had resisted admitting 'defeat' for the sake of his pride. But now he'd resigned himself to using magic to hopefully solve this issue, he was determined that he would succeed.

He'd already made small magical stones that were placed on the floor of each of the babies cribs. Each stone had a twin that would transmit the sound from one to the other, this allowed the person carrying the twin stone to exit the room and still be able to listen for the babies waking or fussing. He was currently carrying Xueyu's crib stone, and thus he could hear that his aunt was having no luck in getting his baby sister to settle and sleep.

These stones allowed for sound to escape, but sound entering from outside of the area of the crib would be very dampened and quiet. His original creation was one where sound could not enter at all, but he'd found that some background noise was apparently more preferable to babies than pure silence. Innovation was an iterative process sometimes, even though he could not create things perfectly the first time, every time.

This cribstone creation of his was likely the first time such a thing had been created. In the Heavenly Palace of Jiuchongtian, there were hundreds or even thousands of servants in every palace. With so many servants to care for the royal babies every whim, such a thing had never been needed. But with the current situation his aunt was extremely cautious and wary. Other than Nai Nai she was allowing no one other than family, or close friends like Lian Song or Chengyu to care for the children.

Gungun's power and skill in magic had been close to High Immortal level for almost ten thousand years, combined with his genius, he was able to create such items with relative ease. There were many reasons why such an item had not been created before, but there was no reason he could not make more of them, though that might become tedious.

Perhaps he would write down all the creations he had made so far and in the future, so others might be able to make them, or hire a High Immortal to craft them. He realised that being a genius, having great knowledge, power and skill was useless if it wasn't being used to benefit others. Its only other use had been to inflate his own pride, which he was learning had been a very childish thing to do, one he'd sworn to rid himself of.

He was currently in the process of creating an item that would darken the area around Xueyu's crib. As Jiuchgontian had no day and night cycle, but was constantly bathed in divine light, he thought this might be contributing to his baby sister not being able to get to sleep easily.

High God Zhe Yan had assured him that small amounts of petty magic, so long as they were not interacting with Xueyu's own just-forming energies and power, would be safe. But Xueyu was his little sister, and the last remnant of both his parents, he would take no chances with her safety.

As a result he was currently placing the enchantment inside a crystal orb, so the darkness would still be projected, but the magic would be completely contained. That way there would be no residual energy or magic around Xueyu's crib that might cause harm to her delicate state.

On a whim, because pure darkness might be scary or boring, he decided to add a replica of the night sky, with not a single star out of place. When his sister was a bit older, he could even use this to teach her about the stars and constellations, their placements and purposes.

He hesitated a moment, and then for the first time in his life, he allowed himself to create something imperfect, and added a very important star to the nightsky illusion. This star had fallen three days ago, he had not been able to bring himself to leave it out and make the sky match perfectly the one currently in Qing Qiu.

This was his mothers star, as Nine-Tailed Foxes, their lives were tied to the universe more closely than most other clans or races, this meant that their births and deaths were reflected in the stars.

He did not think it was fair his little sister would never know the sky as his mother's star had shone among its brethren; perhaps this night sky illusion was quite perfect after all.

His mother's star had been a quite bright pinkish-red one, while his own star was a standard white-silver, faint but clear. Gungun's father did not have a corresponding star, but because he had helped create the universe, so it could be claimed that all the stars in the night sky owed their existence to him.

His little sister did not have a soul form of a Nine-tailed Fox, and so she also had no corresponding star in the night sky. When she was older Gungun would be sure to console her by explaining this because she took after their father in this matter. If the most powerful and revered being in the universe did not have a star, then the fact she did not either was not something to be sad or ashamed about, but instead it could be something she was proud of.

He had a feeling he would need to create many such explanations for this tiny, fragile sister of his in future, fate had been too cruel. Xueyu had no soul form, and her power unstable and sensitive due to her immortal root being damaged and her meridians misshapen, but she was alive, and he would protect her with everything he had.

Not only because he did not want to let down his parents, but that he loved this tiny sibling with far more fervour than he'd expected.

Speaking of fervour, Xueyu was now fussing far more loudly than before, his poor tired baby sister.

Gungun returned his focus to the large smooth crystal sphere in his hand, there was no chance even an adult could try and eat it, so Xueyu had absolutely no hope of doing so.

He placed the finishing touches, adding the silver river of stars, and seasonal and yearly rotations of the stars to match Qing Qiu's night sky.

Gungun resolved to also write down how to make this orb, others that did not have legions of servants at their beck and call might find it helpful. He could add instructions on how to change where the 'sky' would be viewed from too, such as mortal worlds, the lower realm, demon realm and others. But this orb, with its precious star still shining, this one would remain the only one. Others would have accurate skies reflected, but his little sister would have this imperfect, but also perfect one, just for her.

"Aunt, may I hold her and see if this works?", Gungun requested, holding up the sphere in his hand for his aunt to inspect.

"Of course," Bai Qian replied as she walked over with his fussy baby sister in her arms.

His aunt was not particularly motherly by nature, even though she was putting forth diligent efforts to be so, this fact was quite obvious.

He held up his creation for his aunt to check, and he was pleased when she deemed it safe.

"At least when you create complicated magic items it's for a purpose, unlike that father of yours.", Bai Qian said, tone acerbic.

That was true, his father had a habit of creating things that were horrifically overly complicated and powerful, purely because he enjoyed not being bored and the added complexity used up more time.

His father was not like Mo Yuan, Zhe Yan or Lian Song, who created magical items as a hobby. Dong Hua Dijun only created magical items when needed to fulfil a specific purpose.

On the seventh level of Jiuchongtian there was the Miaohua glass; a divine and mystical waterfall that showed the past and current lives of mortals in any of the billions of mortal worlds that made up the trichiliocosm; of all the beings in existence, only his father Dong Hua was strong enough to use it. This item was already one of a kind, and was considered a sacred item of the Heavenly Tribe for this ability it possessed.

But when his father had wanted to see the past and present lives of immortals, he had casually gone about creating a version of the Miaohua glass that did so. Something that had been thought impossible had been done so easily by his father, was it any wonder Gungun still harboured hope his father might be able to bring his mother back, somehow?

"Thank you," Gungun replied to his aunt's observation, because her words could be considered a type of praise of his work, even though her words were not really aimed at him, but at his father.

Even without his emotional awareness ability, Gungun would still have been able to tell that his aunt was not truly angry with his father, because he was suffering too. His aunt had lost her niece, but Dong Hua Dijun had lost his wife and the mother of his children. It was more that Gungun's father was currently the easiest target for her to vent about, and this helped her resist her still simmering desire to cause extreme harm to...someone.

Dong Hua Dijun, the Lord Shaoyang of the Purple Manor had not been seen in two days, Taichen Palace had been locked down like a fortress, everyone assumed he was still inside. Where he actually was or what he was doing, no one knew. Despite their best efforts not even Lian Song had been allowed entry, and Zhong Lin either did not know, or had been ordered to to tell anyone.

Bai Qian nodded at him to sit down, and he did so.

He was quite excited and nervous as his truly tiny sister was placed carefully in his arms, he truly hoped this worked. But even if it did not, he had another thirty four ideas ready to work on.

His Xueyu safely tucked in his arms he activated the night sky orb he'd created. Immediately a dome two metres tall and five metres wide surrounded the three of them and darkened everything inside. It was not pitch black, the dazzling array of stars as seen in Qing Qiu shone brightly enough that nothing was truly in pure shadow.

While he was analysing his work for any flaws, his little sister had immediately ceased fussing, eyes wide, taking in all the sparkling stars.

Xueyu had their mothers almond shaped eyes, and with them wide open in wonder like this, they were exactly the same, so expressive.

Aside from his nose and his eyes being a mix of both parents, Gunguns own appearance was an exact copy of his father.

Xueyu had inherited their fathers white-silver hair, his ears, and possibly his more angular jaw shape; it was hard to tell on such a tiny baby. Aside from those things, Xueyu was almost a copy of their mother. Her nose, brow shape, eyes, snow-pale complexion, the shape of her mouth, all these belonged to his mother, Bai Fengjiu.

Gungun forced himself not to allow tears to gather. He could imagine what his mother's reaction would have been when first seeing Xueyu. She would have grumbled and likely swatted Dong Hua for being greedy and imposing his hair on both children, even though Gungun knew from his research such things were mostly chance.

But then his mother would have looked more closely, and been very gleeful that she could clearly claim victory in the rather silly battle she'd insisted on waging about which of them would have their traits reflected most this time.

Gungun could imagine what his fathers reply would have likely been too, 'You have won the battle, but if we consider both children, then the best you can claim in this war is a draw.'

His mother would be outraged and decry such a thing, then his father would probably retort with something utterly shameless like 'we could tiebreak with a third'.

If Gungun was there, this would be whispered, but if he was not present his father would likely loudly just state it, with no shame at all. Gungun had the hearing of a fox, with how in love his parents were, he'd heard his father being exceptionally sweet and shameless more than a few times.

Though he realised with a pang of sadness that 'how in love his parents had been' would be correct now, past tense.

Gungun would never hear such things from his father again, even if by some miracle the seal his father had placed on himself resolved itself, there would still never be such sweet shamelessness from the master of the universe, nor his mothers bashful and outraged replies.

His thoughts were broken suddenly by an intake of breath from his aunt. He instinctively cradled his baby sister closer and looked at his aunt, then his illusion, swiftly analysing both to wonder what was wrong, but then saw when his aunt was looking at, and relaxed.

His aunt had spotted his mothers star he'd been unable to exclude from this sky.

"It is perfect.", Bai Qian whispered while looking down at him.

He was almost wondering if his aunt was whispering from pure emotion, but he could not sense such extremes of sorrow from her. It was a half second later his exhausted mind caught up with him, and he looked down at the tiny bundle in his arms.

Surely enough Xueyu was mercifully sound asleep.

Without words his aunt took the night sky stone from him, and he rose carefully with his sister blissfully asleep. Bai Qian walked with him, so the illusion would remain covering Xueyu, and she would hopefully continue to sleep. The three made their way over to Xueyu's crib, which was on the opposite end of the room from Fuzan's; her crying would often wake him.

Gungun was annoyingly short for his age, and so he had to pass his sister to his aunt so she could place her in the crib. Now it remained to be seen if Xueyu would sleep for more than half an hour this time.

With Xueyu's cribstone in his sleeve, he was content to leave her sleeping and moved to the seating platform across from his aunt. His aunt was now drinking tea at from the low table in front of her and reading a screenplay that had come out a few days ago, one she hadn't had time to read.

Gungun sat on the seating platform in the lotus position and attempted to meditate, something he'd never failed to do multiple times a day before...before.

His mind was too awake, even though his body was craving rest and so decided to try and tire out his mind by thinking about the logistics of his other plans.

He wished to create a stuffed toy of some sort, something warm and fluffy. As his little sister seemed to only find sleep in someone's arms, he had the idea to place a tiny amount of his own cultivation inside the stuffed creation, so it would feel the same, and Xueyu would sleep easily.

But he had no idea what form such a thing would take, his only thought was something round enough that they could not pull it over herself and suffocate. His mind was only conjuring the image of a large round, fluffy blob. He'd never been interested in such things, so this was something else he was learning he knew little about.

Perhaps he could ask Bai Chen, they were quite knowledgeable about various things he'd dismissed before, like what toys children liked. Bai Chen had spent all of his allowances of the past six years buying such things for his little brother Fuzan, who wasn't even old enough to roll onto his belly yet, never mind sitting up or speaking.

It was likely Bai Chen would ask Gungun to help him make such a thing for his own little sibling in return for the advice. That he was happy to do, but Bai Chen was lazy and not diligent in cultivating. Taking enough cultivation to sustain a stuffed toy for ten thousand years or so would be nothing to Gungun, but it would be a non-trivial amount for Bai Chen. It was likely Bai Chen would have to ask his parents for permission to make such a toy, though Gungun could think of no real reason why this would not be allowed.

Perhaps he should forewarn his aunt that Bai Chen might do as he normally did, and 'act first, report later'. This was Bai Chen taking advice from Gungun's own mother and High God Bai Zhen, with the defence that it was 'better to ask forgiveness, than permission'.

Gungun would simply have to explain to Bai Chen that causing trouble for his parents at such a time would be extremely callous and unfilial of him.

The bitter thoughts of 'at least Bai Chen has parents', and 'His parents came back from seeming death, why is he so fortunate', entered his mind, and he discarded them swiftly, such thoughts were unworthy of him, and unhelpful.

Gungun would have to wait until his uncle Ye Hua returned with Bai Chen in order to ask for their advice, something he'd only done a handful of times in his thirty thousand years of living.

He placed that idea in the back of his mind for later, and turned his considerable intellect toward idea four of the thirty four he'd thought of, a crystal that could replay sound.

Creating a crystal able to reply sound would be simple enough to make, but the process of recording different lullabies within it would take time.

He had a very good memory, and his mother had sung many lullabies to him when he'd been small. Even his father had done so a few times, but Gungun had vehemently denied needing such a childish thing. His father had respected his wishes and complied, he'd been so foolish.

Perhaps he could ask Zhe Yan if it were possible to go into his memory and extract the sound so that Xueyu would at least have something from their parents to comfort her.

If not then he would simply have to sing the lullabies in their stead. Many people had praised his singing voice on the rare occasions he did so, it had always felt a bit frivolous to sing, a waste of time he could spend learning from books, or practising his magic.

Gunguns sharp hearing courtesy of his true form of a fox picked uplight, even paced but slightly hurried footsteps entering the courtyard.

These were Nai Nais' footsteps, returning from the errand Bai Qian had sent her on, but why were they walking so swiftly?

A few seconds later Nai Nai entered the Hall and Gungun opened his eyes to look at his aunt's personal maidservant, unable to help his curiosity.

"Your Highness, Imperial Prince", Nai Nai greeted Bai Qian, then himself.

"What is it Nai Nai?", Bai Qian asked.

"Immortal Official Zhong Lin asked me to deliver this letter to you directly, he says it is from Lord Shaoyang? Dijun.", Nai Nai replied, slightly confused as she held up the aforementioned letter with both hands.

Gunguns aunt waved Nai Nai forward to give her the letter.

Though Zhong Lin was the head steward of Taichen Palace, it was rare for such formality to be needed. If messages needed to be relayed, then a servant, Zhong Lin or Nai Nai would visit one another and relay them in person. As Gungun had grown up alongside Bai Chen, Xiwu Palace had become more of a second home than Bihai Cangling. For a letter to be sent with this level of formality and political officiality was very new, and concerning.

Cautious, wary, but these emotions were 'banked' like coals, his aunt was bracing herself for something.

Gungun watched his aunt open and read the letter.

Seconds later he was putting valiant effort into not throwing up at the sudden and extreme emotional flare that was occuring nearby. .

Whatever was written on the letter had managed to cause his aunt to switch from grief to pure, blazing fury in nearly an instant.

Gungun was thankful he had not really eaten since yesterday, at least the vomit he was about to expel would be simple to clean up.

Mercifully his grand-aunt teleported away a moment before he was about to lose the battle with his stomach.

Gungun was left to take deep, measured breaths to settle his queasy stomach. After a few moments he was able to look up at where Nai Nai was still standing, clearly just as confused as he was about what exactly was in the letter.

Gungun walked over to the platform his aunt had been seated on. In the meantime Nai Nai had picked up the letter from the floor, but Gungun did not take it from her.

Instead he picked up the envelope from the table, allowed himself to blink in surprise then gestured for Nai Nai to give him the refolded letter.

Gungun carefully placed the letter back into the envelope and left it on the table without reading it's contents.

Even if his aunt had not taken the letter with her, he would not have breached her privacy to read it. Even if he ignored etiquette and morality and wanted to read it, it would have been a crime to do so, a grave one at that. This was because the letter had clearly been sent in an official capacity, as it had been sent with all the formal seals of Taichen Palace, but instead of the pale purple 'foling' flower emblem, instead the ancient, historical 'Silversun' emblem had been used.

The purple wax that made up the silversun seal was darker than the one his father used for the foling emblem, a stronger, more bold purple, imposing. The silver wax of the sun, with its many wavy rays was actually quite uncomfortable to try and look at, his eyes kept skipping all over, unable to find a point to focus on. It wasn't a design made to seal invitations to garden parties or banquets, but for councils of war and ruling court.

And so Gungun was left with a queasy stomach, a great amount of curiosity and worry, and concern about what had caused his aunt such fury.

Gungun could easily guess where his aunt would have gone, considering the origin of the letter.

Taichen Palace was about to receive a very furious Crown Princess of the Heavenly Tribe.

He couldn't leave little Fuzan and Xueyu alone, so he simply had to hope that his aunt didn't accidentally trigger a civil war within the Heavenly Tribe.

His emotions had been quite washed out and muted for the past day, and so when he realised just how much the world was spiralling into chaos after his mother had died, he almost wanted to laugh.

Fate was a fickle thing, who knew the departure of the most chaotic person in the world would result in the world being chaotic.

Perhaps his mother had been channelling all the chaos of the world into herself, just as the Immortal Execution Platform gathered the dark energies.

For some reason the thought brought forth a wan, watery smile, the first he'd managed in days.