6.25 - Mountain, Tide, and Dragon

Atop the mountain where Abbot Liao kept his monastery, Chen Fei reforged herself into an immortal in truth.

With the elixir Abbot Liao had given her upon her return swirling in her lower dantian and through her meridians, she pulled from the very foundations of the world to craft herself anew. From earth and metal and mountain, she forged her bones, crafted her flesh. Remade herself anew. Piece by piece, she became the mountain in truth.

For all the years she’d spent with He Yu in that temple, taking lessons from the spirit Yongnian, she’d never quite understood his epithet for her. Daughter of the Mountain, he’d called her. She’d thought it was just some fanciful way he’d had of speaking. As it turned out, he’d meant it literally. This much she’d come to learn after her return to the mountain, her return to the village where she’d first taken shame into her heart, and let it twist her into something she’d never meant to be.

The first step on the path to becoming who she truly was—who she’d always been—had been returning here. That much had been obvious, an inescapable truth that loomed larger in her thoughts with every passing day. The next step had also been the one she’d correctly assumed she would need to take. Finding her parents and seeking their forgiveness.

Except, as she’d learned, there was no forgiveness to be given where there was no fault to forgive. She had been young, her father told her, and her fear was natural. She had been inexperienced, her mother had assured her, and her shame was understandable. But she’d run, she said. She’d abandoned the village after, left them to the slow withering death of time and neglect.

There was nothing she could have done. Had she stayed, she wouldn’t have changed her home’s ultimate fate. She wouldn’t have saved them. Most importantly, she wouldn’t have grown into the woman she was now. The fighter. The guardian. The mountain who protected the valley below. She’d let herself cry, taking no shame in it, and taking comfort in her parents’ embrace. For several days, she allowed herself to rest, and then she’d left once again. This time with pride, and with strength, to do what she’d always known she’d come here for.

Her father gifted her with a proper copy of her family art, the Seventy-Two Blessed Symbols. Although she’d advanced it considerably in her time away, she lacked insights into the finer details. The copy he’d left her was the oldest they’d once had—the master record that all other iterations practiced in her village had been derived from. It would allow her to advance it as far as she could go herself. It was a gift she’d told them she was unworthy of. Her parents simply told her they were proud, and that she ought to follow her Dao.

Upon her return to the monastery, Abbot Liao Shan was waiting. He presented her with an elixir, then opened the cave on his mountain’s peak. He left her to her task and asked that she visit one last time before she headed south once again.

So now here she was, the conflux of earth and mountain surging all around her, and the metal from Abbot Liao’s elixir giving her the last of her needed aspects. She constructed for herself an even greater panoply than she’d used before, drawing upon the third stage of the White Mountain Body Art to aid in reforging her body as she advanced to the Seventh Realm.

Dimly she was aware of the raging power all around her, contained only by the powerful formations that lined Abbot Liao’s immortal’s cave. She’d been right to leave He Yu while he advanced. Without protective scripts to contain his spirit, she’d have been ripped apart by his storm. Without the time she’d spent with her parents, and the wisdom she’d been given upon her talk with Abbot Liao, she doubted she’d have been able to take this step, even if her cultivation base contained more than enough qi by now.

Within the depths of her spirit, a mountain rose. Titanic bones of earth and metal coalesced from the roots of the world. Strength surged through them, and Chen Fei became eternal. Her mountain towered to heaven, a lonely peak atop the world and standing beneath the pale light of a single star.

She stood, remade. She made a fist, and with only the barest trickle of qi, the world cracked beneath her might.

Turning her attention to the south, she cast her immortal perception to the flat plain that lay between two great mountain ranges. Upon the arid expanse outside the Western Passage, a storm beat against the fury of molted earth, and a tiger fought a demon.

Chen Fei called forth her bronze disc and assumed a cycling position atop it. Her friends needed her. He Yu needed her. And now that she’d fully accepted her Way, her Dao of Protection, there was much she had yet to do.

*

Zhang Lifen sat in the center of Li Renshu’s cultivation chamber. It had been a trivial thing to reconfigure the formation script to suit her cultivation base. Li Bao had been kind enough to gift her a powerful medicinal pill that would aid her in her breakthrough, along with several high-grade spirit stones. If she didn’t know better, she’d have said the marquis had taken a liking to her during her time taking sanctuary in Iron Gate City.

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth at that. Wouldn’t that be something? Li Heng would be absolutely mortified if she struck up any sort of relationship with his father. Should they manage to survive all this insanity of open rebellion against Jin Xifeng, it would be the makings of a legendary scandal, too. She might consider it, should it turn out Ren Huang didn’t survive. They might have their disagreements, and the effects of their cultivation on their personalities might cause complications, but their relationship had deepened over their years on the run, regardless.

She wasn’t about to leave him to the whims of fate if she could help it.

It wasn’t as if she’d lied to He Yu and the others when she’d advocated they find Huang before moving forward. She just hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with her motivations for doing so. They could use all the help they could get, and she’d been perfectly sincere when she used that as her line of reasoning.

And Yi Xiurong, too, she supposed. She’d be useful as well. Zhang Lifen was very much not motivated by the promise of getting to see Yi Xiurong’s reaction when she arrived, having made it to Divine Body Attainment. Not motivated in the least.

As Zhang Lifen slowed her breathing, allowing her cultivation base to cycle through her meridians along with all the advancement resources, she focused on her Dao. The Dao of Grace wasn’t one she’d found to be particularly demanding, which suited her just fine. It meshed well with her cultivation, though.

The tides of her spirit ebbed and flowed as she contemplated the familiar pulse of her nature. Fickle, they’d called her. Unserious. They just didn’t understand her. She simply moved as her whims dictated—in the abstract, that wasn’t any different from any other cultivator. They followed their Way, just as she followed hers. Fair was fair, and the Eternal Dao encompassed all things. Even a woman who cared little for outcomes of her games. The playing was where the importance always lay.

And now she found herself pulled along by the most unforseen outcome she’d ever been wrapped up in. Would she have done things differently had she known what Sha Xiang would become? How He Yu would grow?

No. It was an easy thing to answer, that. She may be adept at hiding her motivations and intentions from others, but she was always honest with herself.

She wouldn’t have changed a damn thing. Jin Xifeng had been close to breaking free of the Dawn Palace already—closer than any of them had truly realized. Kong Huizhong’s death had only hastened the inevitable. Nothing that she, He Yu, or Sha Xiang had done would have changed the ultimate fate of the Shrouded Peaks Sect.

But now they had a chance. That weak young man she’d once absently wondered about had turned into an expert the likes of which came about once in every ten thousand years. And he’d somehow gathered an assembly of equally monstrous talents around himself. Like he was some collector of experts, gathering prodigious freaks of nature.

She wasn’t about to let this opportunity pass her by. Going against someone like Jin Xifeng might be her end, but regardless of what happened, Zhang Lifen was certain of one thing—she was in for one hell of a ride.

*

Long Tingguang’s flying sword swooped down into the courtyard of the imperial palace in Jiankang. The sun had long since set and clouds covered the sky as a storm rolled in from the coast. Only the orange glow of stone lanterns lit the courtyard. He supposed it was fitting, returning as he was in disgrace and bearing the news he did.

As he ascended the steps to the palace, flanked by guardian lions that followed him with their stone gazes, Long Tingguang steeled himself for what was to come. He would not show fear to his empress, even though he knew that her wrath was immanent. He would not show weakness, even though he was undeserving of anything other than destruction at her hands. He would accept whatever punishment she saw fit to deal him—even should that punishment be his utter obliteration. He was her servant to do with as she wished, even should she wish to destroy him and take his cultivation base back into her own.

Massive iron-banded doors swung open silently on greased hinges, admitting him to the palace proper. The hall within was empty save for the lone figure sitting atop the imperial throne at the far end. The Dragon Throne sat atop a raised dais, painted vermilion and a leaved in gilt. Carvings of dragons watched over the throne room from atop the seat of imperial power, ready to ward against the schemes of eunuchs and rivals alike. Shame stabbed into Long Tingguang’s heart as he approached the throne. The paint and the gold leaf—symbols of imperial majesty—reminded him too much of that desert barbarian’s spear. Just another reminder of his utter failure.

His empress sat upon her throne, her features unreadable. Whatever fury raged in her heart at his failure, she kept it buried, hidden even from him. If only he were so disciplined, if only he were so in control of his own unworthy nature. His heart broke as he drew near. For centuries, only one wish, one desire, had grown in his chest. To serve, to prove his undying loyalty to the divine empress before him. To earn even a fraction of the gifts she had showered upon him, her unwavering and unworthy servant.

At the foot of the steps leading up the dais, Long Tingguang threw himself to the ground, his forehead thumping against the tile floor. One thousand times he kowtowed in silence, as he felt the furious gaze of his empress drill into his back. In the quiet of the imperial hall, he prostrated himself before her, still not yet daring to speak. Only when, at long last, she graced him with a single word, did he stop. Did he rise, did he dare look upon her.

“Speak,” she said.

The word, delivered softly, trembled with a fury that caused his spirit to quiver. It contained such rage, such hatred, that had he been a lesser expert, had he not reforged his body and soul in defiance of heaven, that word alone would have been his unmaking.

“This Long Tingguang has failed you, Empress Jin. This unworthy creature has suffered defeat at the hands of Li Renshu and Tan Zihao. He was forced to flee, to return the great imperial capital of Jiankang in utter disgrace. The west still defies your rule, and the forces of the Li stand now in open rebellion, aligned with the treacherous King Tan. The armies of the Jade Kingdom amass in the Western Passage. This one awaits his deserved punishment.”

Silence hung over the throne room like an executioner’s sword. For what seemed like an eternity, Long Tingguang awaited his fate. At last, Empress Jin saw fit to grace him with her words once again. One last chance to hear her voice before she took his life.

“Your martial daughter is dead. Her core returned to me. It told me all I need to know.”

Long Tingguang cast his eyes to the tile floor once again. Her words caused the once-steady light of the lanterns to flicker, so great was her rage.

“Stand,” Empress Jin commanded. “Look at me.”

The once-servant leaped to his feet. Even now, his death rapidly approaching, would he never dare to hesitate to obey her command. As he met her eyes, the throne room as it was fell away, replaced by the immensity of her spirit, her regal power. A field of corpses stretched out in all directions. Before him stood Jin Xifeng, her power fully revealed. Behind her, a blood-red sun filled the sky, even while half-obscured beyond the horizon. She reached a hand out to him, and shadows leaped to fulfill her desire.

Blood and shadow rushed into his spirit. Wrapped around his own demon core. The swell of power nearly ripped him apart as it pushed its way into his meridians, into all the tiniest crevices of his existence. She gripped him with the technique that was the very foundation of all her might—the Immaculate Monarch’s Boon.

As she poured her power into him, remaking him and refining him into a tool worthy of her purposes, she spoke again. “Hunt down the surviving disciples of the Shrouded Peaks Sect and kill them. Then do the same to the inheritor of Cai Weizhe’s arts. Do not fail me again. Return victorious, or return in death.”