Shifting Tides: Book 7 of Painting the Mists

we accelerate the plan but don’t otherwise hamper him. Ninety percent if we do nothing in response to his actions.”
“And if we add you into the mix?” the man said.
Zhou Li grinned. Those were the words he’d been waiting for. “Fifteen percent chance of derailment, but sixty percent chance of removing him permanently. He might be strong on this plane, but compared to me, he’s weak. He’s also separated from most of his friends.”
“We should just remove him,” a gruff-sounding man said from the side. The gray-haired man had sharp teeth and bloodred eyes. Despite these frightening features, his tanned skin and chiseled jawline made him unusually attractive.
“Sure,” Zhou Li said. “Which of our transcendents would like to volunteer for this mission? Lu Tianhao only has two men guarding him as we speak, so in all, we’d only have to sacrifice three transcendents to get the job done.”
His sarcasm was biting and served to highlight their greatest weakness—fear of death. Despite all their power and tens of thousands of years of effort, death and reincarnation wasn’t something anyone wanted to go through needlessly. It was due to this weakness that, despite his vision and planning, they’d yet to succeed. Their fear wasn’t unfounded, of course. Who could truly know if there would be a next life? They’d already lost half of their original members through spiritual erosion, and any one of them could be next.
“We’ll cede to your better judgment,” the original man said, defusing the situation. “When are you leaving?”
“Immediately,” Zhou Li said. “Meanwhile, please contact the Spirit Temple. They need to remain vigilant and push for early completion. It will cost them, but they’ll regret it if they don’t.”
The man sighed. “I’ll try, but you know how stubborn they are.”
“I do,” Zhou Li said. “But if they fail again, I won’t be able to guarantee their standing in the Alliance. I’ll let the Buddhists come at them with everything they have, and they’ll soon learn that even monks can harbor grudges.”
The man gulped. “I’ll pass on the message.”
“I don’t doubt you will,” Zhou Li said. Then, he turned to a taciturn man in a corner, a man who’d yet to say anything. “Is everything going well on your end?”
“Peachy,” he said. “Run along and don’t meddle with my plans. You’re not good at this sort of thing.”
“I suppose I’m not,” Zhou Li said. He hated war, as it was a boring, chaotic mess. As he left the room, the building, and his associates, he began fleshing out a plan. Countless threads of possibility danced before his eyes. He plucked them, one by one, evaluating his future actions.
Elsewhere in the universe, an old man with white hair and timeless eyes gazed at a trickling stream in a mighty canyon. The man was Yama, and like any good CEO, he was doing research. Market research. The River of Souls, which usually delivered a constant flood of fresh clients, had receded. It now ran at less than ten percent capacity, as though the mighty lake from which it flowed had been dammed, preventing it from escaping downstream.
Such a slowdown was unusual, especially given the current political climate. It was like the river had been purposefully slowed, stopped up until the reservoir was full to bursting. Eventually, it would burst, and given their stretched resources, Yama wasn’t sure how he’d deal with it.
I need more employees, Yama thought. Good ones. He shifted his thoughts back on the solution: politics. He hated politics. Unfortunately, winning the election was now more important than ever. If they didn’t get more workers soon, the entire universe might collapse within an Underworld millennium, and he really didn’t know how he’d answer to the board if that happened.
Then again, he thought, I might just be the only one to survive a universal collapse. Maybe the Jade Emperor could survive, or even the Curse Sovereign. Neither of them, however, were good company. Shuddering, he whipped out his phone and sent a message to Han Yu. He waited for a second before following up to her reply: Yes, he wanted all of them. All the books in the universe. He’d take all the movies too, but unfortunately, data storage devices got atrociously expensive once they reached a certain size.
Han Yu soon appeared beside him wearing her trademark gray dress suit. She pushed up her black-rimmed glasses and flicked through a tablet before pulling up an appointment. “It’s time for the rally at Time Square,” she said. “I’ve taken the liberty of having your reaper’s robes dry cleaned.”
Yama nodded and motioned for the package in her hands. It disappeared and reappeared on his own body, replacing the jogging suit he’d been wearing and making him look like the Western depiction of the god of death. His bony, albeit strong hands looked skeletal enough; all he was missing was a scythe, but he loathed to carry that archaic tool. Like the farmers before him, he, too, had outgrown the traditional cutting instrument. He now relied on machinery and highly skilled labor to harvest souls.
Han Yu held out her hand, which Yama grasped. Their surroundings lurched as they reappeared in a square where a large clock tower was present. True to its name, Time Square was inhabited by the Sea God and his wife, the goddess of time. The giant clock tower presiding over the square could house billions of spirits within its independent space. It was a great place for holding a speech.
Speaking of which, Judah, his candidate for mayor, was just stepping up to the podium beneath the giant clock. His short stature didn’t matter much, as everyone present was able to zoom in on him and hear him clearly. He held his hands up and waited for everyone to quiet down.
“Ladies and gentlemen, buddhas and spirits, angels and devils, demons, and those who belong to a species but don’t wish to be associated with them… we have a crisis on our hands,” Judah said gravely. “The cycle of