6.16 - Always Another Step

The Monarch’s words echoed across the world. “What comes next?”

Even as the storm retreated, at least around He Yu and the great mountain of Sky’s Throne, a certainty settled over him. No doubts remained—this part mattered most.

“Next, I advance. Next, I—” he cut himself off. A sliver of truth stabbed into his spirit and thoughts.

Cycling the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment as he had this entire time was typically something he only ever did when cultivating. His thoughts and attention, then, always turned inward. The technique’s ability to reveal the truth of things always aimed at himself, his spirit, and the experiences he examined as he sought to ever more completely understand himself.

While much of his struggle against the Monarch of Sky’s Throne had been a struggle of his spirit, it had also been one of defining his relationship to the world. As such, He Yu had necessarily turned an equal portion of his attention outward. And now that attention returned to him knowledge. Knowledge born of the wider world. Of those things that had thus transpired while his attention was turned elsewhere.

After all this time, at least three of the former core disciples lived. Yi Xiurong, Ren Huang, and most importantly, his own mentor. Zhang Lifen. They’d been scattered. By two figures, one familiar and one not. The unfamiliar figure was a gaping pit of blood and blades. An endless maw of violence and death. It carried with it the telltale wrongness of a demon core—but stronger than He Yu had ever felt, except from the presence of Jin Xifeng herself.

The familiar presence was one he’d not felt in decades. One he’d thought dead. The sulfurous broken earth, the molten stone, and the twisted wrongness of cruelty unrestrained—all of it could belong to no one except Sha Xiang. It was Sha Xiang and the other figure that had scattered the core disciples, sending them running so that perhaps one of them might live. It was Sha Xiang who pursued Zhang Lifen, hounding and hunting her until she’d reached the edge of her capabilities.

He Yu returned his attention to the Monarch. “I will venture east,” he said. “I will cross the White Desert once again and seek out someone I should have dealt with long ago.”

The Monarch of Sky’s Throne lifted its great head and turned its golden eyes toward the southeast. Toward the empire. “This one you seek is not the end. What comes next?”

Again, he hesitated, veering away from the obvious and easy answer. His ultimate goal was Jin Xifeng. But he didn’t think that’s what the Monarch was after, not quite. The second presence, the one he’d never felt before, would stand in his way. Of that, he could be certain. Just one more stepping stone. One more foe to overcome before he could complete his goal.

This wasn’t quite the answer the Monarch sought, either. Senseless killing, lurching from one foe to the next, wasn’t the path of a hero. He Yu had long since recognized that a part of his Way was to put down the cruel and the unjust—to put down people like Sha Xiang. But that was a solemn necessity. Not the defining aspect of his path forward.

After what could have as easily been hours or minutes in this eternal and silent storm, He Yu answered. “I will gather together those who remain. My former master, Zhang Lifen. My former seniors, Yi Xiurong and Ren Huang. My friends and allies. Together we will stand and oppose the rule of the Twilight Empress.”

“Do you know what it is you intend, Regent of the Heavenly Palace?”

He Yu examined himself, his thoughts, and considered carefully his answer. “No, I do not.”

It was the truth. Jin Xifeng was beyond him. Not only in the scope of her power but also in the wholeness of who and what she was. Aside from her terrible display after breaking free of the Dawn Palace, He Yu didn’t know anything about her, really.

All he knew was her bloody sunset, hanging low over a field of the dead. He only knew the insatiable sense of want that rolled off her like a relentless fog, reaching out to smother all around her. He’d felt her touch, the siren’s call of gazing long into her eyes, the tug at his heart, and the overwhelming desire to throw himself to the ground and pledge eternal service. He’d seen how many succumbed to that power, losing their minds as they were consumed by her anger and driven to frenzy.

But that wasn’t what the Monarch had asked. To contend with a cultivator of the higher realms was to contend with not only their techniques, but their Way. To contend with their Dao.

He Yu had caught a glimpse of what that looked like when he had stood with Tan Xiaoling and faced her uncle. He was a man who had fully embraced his Way. Nobody reached the Soul Refining stage without, at the very least, forming a Wayborn Seed. Now that he’d the advantage of wisdom, time, and distance, He Yu guessed that perhaps Tan Qingsheng had glimpsed more. That’s he’d forged a connection to his personal Dao greater than typical of an early Soul Refining expert. That, in part, his insistence on fighting first his niece, then He Yu as well, was a part of that. Part of why he’d spent so long waiting for the two of them, rather than advance and ensure his victory.

Somewhere in all that, lay the path forward regarding Jin Xifeng. It formed not only the way to defeat her but also the obstacles He Yu would have to overcome. In much the same way that He Yu had just now clashed against the Monarch of Sky’s Throne, declaring his nature and pitting it against the spirit of this primordial beast, he would have to contest Jin Xifeng’s very Dao.

“Wise you are, for one so young,” the Monarch said. “Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of. To claim knowledge where none is to be had, is the mark of one blinded by their own arrogance.”

The great storm eagle stretched its wings once again. This time, it didn’t assault He Yu with the might of its spirit. No howling gale, no cataclysm of heavenly power. Instead, its spirit reached out and embraced him, gently guiding him back to the stable earth once again. From a sheltered cleft in the face of Sky’s Throne, Chen Fei looked up from her cultivation and smiled at him. It seemed that even as the Monarch tested He Yu, it sheltered her from the wrath she’d not sought out.

The Monarch reached its head down and pulled a feather from its chest before letting it fall. The slate colored feather drifted down, fluttering gently despite the storm that still raged all around the three of them. Along its length, shimmering reflections of heaven’s light danced. Every so often it released leaping sparks, as if the power it contained strained against such a delicate form.

“For you, Regent of the Heavenly Palace,” the Monarch said as He Yu reached for the feather. “A boon. Rewarded for proving your nature to my satisfaction.”

As the feather fell into his hands, a surge of power cascaded through his meridians. The feather’s crackling qi sent tingles into his palms and up his arms. He Yu activated the Peerless Judgment, and the feather’s blazing power nearly blinded him for it.

For some moments, he tried to find the words to express his thanks, but none came. Finally, he had to settle for sending it to his storage treasure, and bowing deeply over a salute.

“The power of my feather will forge a breakthrough to Divine Body Attainment worthy of your legend, young Regent,” the Monarch said. “Even more so, should you break through here, at the foot of Sky’s Throne. Already, as I trust you’re now aware, you have formed the necessary connection to push past your bottleneck. You could advance at any time.”

He Yu’s mouth worked in silence. Finally, he managed push through his disbelief and ask, “You would truly allow that?”

“I would. But first, we must speak. You have an art. One ancient as time itself.”

Cocking his head to the side in an unspoken question, He Yu looked up to the immense eagle towering above him.

“Do you think a being such as I wouldn’t notice the mark on your spirit? That I wouldn’t recognize the assent of the Lord of Thunder himself? Of the Great Dragon of Heaven? One does not cultivate such arts without becoming something else, either in whole or in part.”

“Is that why you agreed to test me?” He Yu asked.

“To temper you,” the Monarch answered, by way of correction. “The art you possess is kin to my own very nature. A confluence of primal forces. Wind and rain and heaven, all brought together to form the unbridled might of the eternal endless sky. Humans learn their arts from manuals, do they not? Show me yours.”

He Yu produced his cultivation manual that contained the instructions to cultivate the Cloud Emperor’s Heavenly Palace. Even after all these years since Elder Cai had changed it by imbuing it with what power he had left, the alterations sparked a sense of wonder in He Yu. The string looked as though they'd just been tied. The vibrant green of the jade itself looked as though it had just been mined and polished, and the characters themselves like they’d just been carved. Even now, under the flashing light of the storm centered on Sky’s Throne, tiny flickers of heaven danced along the smooth surfaces of the jade slip.

A tiny arc of lightning reached out from the slip. Toward the Monarch of Sky’s Throne, as if it had been called to. Another arc answered. The two sparks of power met, forming a thread that bound the storm eagle to the jade slip. Qi surged along that connection. The Monarch absorbed the knowledge of He Yu’s technique in an instant.

“This is good,” it said. “Do you know, child, what you’ve been given?”

“I truly don’t,” he admitted.

“An art such as this stretches back into time. To before the kingdom in which you now hide, before the empire you seek to save. Such arts call the attention of greater and older beings still. It is because of this age, this attention from powers greater than even cultivators of the Ninth Realm, that such arts only ever have one true master.”

“I’d heard something about how Elder Cai had inherited this art, back when I’d first begun cultivating it,” He Yu said.

“And when he placed the mark of his spirit upon it, he passed that inheritance on to you.”

He Yu looked down at the slip, allowing himself to become momentarily entranced by the dancing flickers of heaven qi along its surface. If only for a moment. “I haven’t figured out how to make use of all the changes,” he said.

“Of course you haven’t. Do you think that as far as you’ve come, you don’t have further yet to go? You’ve tasted only a fraction of what awaits you in the Seventh Realm and beyond. Reach Divine Body Attainment. Only then will you begin to understand the enormity of what you’ve been given.”

“It sounds as though you want me to break through now,” he said.

The Monarch of Sky’s Throne said nothing. It merely regarded him with its flashing golden eyes.

From where she sat in her sheltered crevice, Chen Fei looked up to him. Then she turned to the Monarch. “I should go, shouldn’t I?”

“You would not survive the Regent’s advancement. Not as you currently are.”

She stood, crossed over to He Yu, and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you in Jade Mountain Citadel,” she said with a smile. “I think I’ll go visit my parents. Then I’ll return to Liao Shan and break through. It seems… right.”

Calling forth her bronze disc, she sat upon it and shot off to the southeast, disappearing into the black and churning storm.

“She, too, is wise,” the Monarch said as it watched her leave.

He Yu took her place in the sheltered crack at the base of Sky’s Throne. With the mountain’s guardian beast perched above him, and the storm raging all around, he produced once again the feather of the Monarch. He closed his eyes and cycled his cultivation base again.

There, in the heart of the eternal storm, he began his ascent into Divine Body Attainment. Into the Seventh Realm of cultivation.