CC6 -ch 13-

The slow grind of his lower Dantian and it’s Qi-Sea reverberated through Ash’s senses.

A sound that felt like two rocks being eternally run past one another.

Or sand paper moving across a surface without end.

Locke had told him that the world was moving slowly at the moment and he believe her. Believed that it was inching along in fractions of seconds for minutes of time.

It just seemed weird to him for that to be true yet his Qi-Sea moved at the same rate it always did. He chalked it up to the same realization that he had thoughts moving at a normal speed.

Rather than a slowed or altered rate.

That and this was the spirit realm.

Wincing, Ash shook his head, and refocussed his thoughts.

The first two hours had gone well enough as he just sat there and listened. His focus had remained steady and strong.

Contemplating things and feeling as if his awareness of his middle Dantian was growing.

Only to find no change had occurred in any way.

Locke had already told him to remain here regardless of what he felt or experienced. That he would be well aware of when he finally did open his upper Dantian.

The upper Dantian’s arrival wouldn’t be something he could ignore or dismiss.

Frustrated, Ash mentally shoved at his Qi-Sea and then mentally slammed a palm against his massive golden Dao pillar.

Neither moved or did much of anything in response.

His Qi-Sea was immense and solid to the point of it being a molten slab of tungsten.

As pure as could be, without an element, and always quick to use.

The golden Dao pillar that was momentum dominated the center space.

Down here, it was all golden bricks that’d been formed in his early days as a Cultivator. Laid down as he learned developed what he wanted his life to be and how to build around it.

His lower Dantian was indeed the foundation and it was well and truly finished. There was nothing here that needed to be done.

Letting his mind drift into his middle Dantian, Ash found a large number of new brides spread out around the golden pillar. They were in various states of prayer, supplication, or inspection of the Dao.

Inducted Brides were falling more and more into the category of religious worshippers of Ash and his Dao rather than Cultivators. Given how he had changed, it made sense to him.

The Knights stood at the edge of the middle Dantian, facing outward toward whatever might be beyond it. They were all inside of the line of the Dao though and were part of the whole.

The Knights are somewhat revereant as well.

At this rate… at this rate the Brothers of Sheng will need to become the Brothers and Sisters of Sheng.

To become the foundation of the Sheng Alliance since the Brides and Knights are more akin to religious groups.

Still somewhat aggravating that I was never able to include male Cultivators into any of it.

Only male citizens turned Knights made it into here.

Even as Ash contemplated that, he could feel a response from the Dao and all those who were part of it. An extreme resistance to the idea of male Cultivators being part of the Dao.

Something that’d been fostered onto the Dao by the Brides themselves, accepted by the Knights, and entrenched by absolute belief.

That odd thought gave him momentary hesitation.

His mind had come to a complete halt as he really considered what he had just thought about.

The Brides, the Knights, and those who were closest to him, actively played a part in his middle Dantian. He actively pulled people in and out of it as if it were the Hall itself.

For all intents and purposes, his middle Dantian was acting in a way that it shouldn’t.

Originally it’d been a way for him to view how others viewed him and what he felt his self realization was. Now it was a place where others could exert influence over their belief of who “Lord Sheng” was.

“I’m not mortal,” Ash whispered as he looked over the whole of his middle Dantian.

It was gargantuan when he truly inspected it.

The number of statues that were part of the Dao, lodged within it, were numerous. To the point that he wouldn’t have a way to count them all even if he could find them all.

There were a good number of fresh Brides surrounding it, which he’d been warned not to touch yet, and then there were the Knights.

Knights that easily numbered at half a thousand now and growing slowly as more took up the cause.

“I’m not mortal and this isn’t a Dantian. This is a plane. A realm,” he continued as he looked out upon it.

The furthest edges of the smoky walls of the Dantian dissipated in that moment. Fell away and the entirety of the Dantian morphed.

It shifted wildly.

There were several odd noises Ash heard that he couldn’t identify. As if wind was tearing through the area. Rustling unseen trees full of leaves.

Lasting only a second it was gone quickly.

What had been a golden floor was now the grass of the Hall. A number of it’s buildings spread throughout the space.

Rising out of the center was the Dao pillar as it normally was.

Not far off was another circular space though it was most certainly the city of Wahst. At it’s center was a gleaming silver pillar with a statue of Ren Ghast atop it.

Holding her hands out toward the golden pillar.

To the other side was another circular space that looked a lot like a sect ground.

The silver pillar that was there had Liu atop it, knelt low in mid prayer.

There were several groups of Brides that hadn’t been integrated yet at Liu’s sect and only one group at Ren’s. These were the Brides that had yet to be given the Bonds of Sheng and brought fully into the Dao.

Between these three spaces were a number of paths. Connecting them all together.

Ash couldn’t see where the Knights had gone, but he knew they were somewhere here. Likely part of the whole, just as so many Brides were part of the Dao.

“I’m not mortal,” Ash repeated as he gazed out across the expanse. He then gave himself a small mental shake. “My momentum is not my own but the groups. The me of yesterday was who spoke to the Scribe.

“I was wrong.

“This has nothing to do with me opening my upper Dantian. Nothing at all.

“That’ll open when it’s ready and when I’m in alignment with myself. Forcing it would only limit me later.

“The me of today and tomorrow is that of Lord Sheng. Not… Ashley Sheng.

“That’s why he named me as he did. Wrote as he did.

“But I’m truly not that anymore.

“I’m not… him.”

A crackling noise, as if one were peeling the shell off a hard boiled egg, caused Ash to look up.

Above the three areas a new area was being formed.

An aqua blue circular plane was growing out of nothing. It looked to be somewhat gauzy and insubstantial. As if it were still yet in the process of being formed.

“Ah, yes,” Ash mumbled and then smiled. “Lord Sheng as it is above. A concept still yet forming and my idealized self.

“I thought my Middle Dantian was formed and fully realized, yet only when I consider myself as Ashley Sheng. When that is fully realized, I imagine my upper Dantian will be ready.

“Now though, as I am, as Lord Sheng, the inheritor of the One Emperor, bearing his ring, with a Dao built by the will of hundreds, maybe I can convince him to let things go.”

Ash momentarily felt something inside of his mind quiver, but dutifully ignored it. He wasn’t ready to open his upper Dantian, even if given a chance to do so.

He hadn’t even fully formed his middle Dantian yet as Lord Sheng.

Opening his eyes, Ash found himself standing in the cavern. The Knights and Brides of Sheng were arrayed out in front of him in a ready posture to defend him.

“Please move aside,” Ash requested and then started forward. Despite the Brides and Knights attempting to move out of the way for him, he wasn’t going to wait.

A tsunami of opposing power was coming toward them.

It was easily six or seven times the weight of his Dao’s momentum even at it’s peak. There was no question that power in opposition to whatever was coming for him wasn’t the answer.

The Scribe was most certainly correct that Ash couldn’t defeat it in a struggle.

“Ashley? You… you didn’t open your upper Dantian? What’re we doing?”

Asking the One Emperor to step aside.

Because it isn’t time for me to open my upper Dantian.

My wife told me it’d be risky and I happen to agree with her.

It’ll open when it’s ready to open.

One cannot rush enlightenment.

Besides, I feel the Scribe was trying to tell me Ashley Sheng wasn’t the answer.

Lord Sheng is.

Stepping out from the ranks of his people, Ash casually pulled his Qi backward. Causing it to fold on itself, move over him, and then reform behind him. Locking the Brides, Knights, and everyone else behind it and singling himself out.

From the far side of the cave an opaque figure came out from the darkness. Floating ethereally over the ground without any part of it touching the earth.

“You’ve opened the way,” hissed an accusatory voice. The words sounded akin to icicles being snapped off a low hanging beam. A sharp ping carrying each to Ash’s ears as if they weren’t spoken but hurled at him. “You opened the way and the plague will follow! Another realm will end!”

“No,” Ash said with determination. “It won’t. I’ve sent the deity that caused the plague away from the realm. As your inheritor, Lord Sheng of the Sheng family, I’ve come to begin the cycle again.”

Ash then held up his hand the wore the family heirloom of the Grassy Vale’s imperial clan.

Fully repaired and carrying a weight he had never understood until lately, the ring had a heavy significance to those who knew what it was.

If this truly was a projection of the last who held it, they would know it.

“The cycle must resume. The rebirth for the realms has been stalled for too long” Ash offered as the cloud like apparition closed in on him.

Though the ghostly cloud’s intensity seemed to dim a touch, it didn’t halt. It charged forward until it engulfed Ash from head to toe.

Which he welcomed and didn’t try to fight.

This was something he would meet head on and do his best to bring into balance. Because right now, the momentum of it was too high.

Too high for a war that no longer existed.

Ash needed to bring the projection of the One Emperor to a close. His momentum was ill-placed and no longer fit in the world it existed in.

“The cycle? My family made the cycle!” screamed a voice inside of Ash’s head. “We brought it forth to balance the realms and bring them into balance!

“You dare tell me what should be where? You dare to tell me what must be done? The realms bowed to me! They came together as I wished and broke apart when I demanded it!

“You’re but a speck! A fly landing upon a shit I left upon the ground! Nothing!”

As the One Emperor screamed at him, Ash felt his blood run cold, his muscles stiffen, and his entire body lock up. Slowly, he was stretched backward and his back arched against his will.

“Perhaps,” Ash got out between grit teeth. “Perhaps I am! Yet here I am. To continue where you left off. I would not have your ring, if you had not left it for me. I’m Lord Sheng, he who laid low the horned deity, opened the emergency bunker, and returned to the capital and cleared it of the demonic cult!”

Ash felt a pause in the strange force of rage that held him in it’s grip, as if it were considering his words.

“We shall see,” hissed the projection a moment before Ash’s vision went dark, though he heard the distinct crunch of what he was fairly certain was his skull.

A sound that he felt almost was a perfect match to when the Emperor had punched a finger into Gen’s skull, limiting his cultivation permanently.

In this darkness, Ash couldn’t feel his body, his senses were deadened, and as far as he knew, he was naught else but a mind floating in space.

“I wonder if this is the time before life, death, or the in-between state,” Ash mused aloud.

Or tried to.

He heard no sound come from himself, nor did he have a mouth to move. While he was certain that he had attempted to speak, there was no outward confirmation of that.

“Well, if it’s death, does that mean that I’ll end up stuck in some limbo state? There wasn’t anyone there with the Celestial Scribe. That would mean that souls aren’t making it to that location,” continued Ash. Content in th moment to just converse with himself.

He couldn’t explain it, but he wasn’t actually afraid of the One Emperors projection.

In fact, at the moment, he was quite resolved to just wait.

The projection had been put here to make sure that the Qi plague didn’t follow into the other realm. Where there would be Cultivators for it to lay low once again.

Since the previous realm had no Qi, there was no-where for the plague to inhabit or spread to.

“You claim you’re my inheritor?” demanded a voice. Ash didn’t actually hear it, but it felt more similar to when Locke spoke to him.

“I bear your ring, I have inherited the Hall and it’s teachings. While I’m not of your blood, I have taken up your cause,” Ash stated with absolute conviction. “The realms must be balanced again. The man who claims to be the Emperor seems to be losing his hold on everything even as the Demonic Cultivators steal the life-force of others.

“The realms don’t progress at all and if anything, the Kingdoms are stagnant. In fact, the current Emperor was using the emergency bunker as a prison. Sending people there to spend centuries of time there or just leaving them to rot till they die.”

“A prison?” whispered the voice. Ash was now certain that the person speaking to him was the One Emperor’s projection. “A prison. Yes… I see it. Yes.

“Your memories are clear when you speak. When you look to your own experiences. Let’s go on a trip, you and I. We shall see just how much of my inheritor you are. Or perhaps an usurper.

“We’ll begin with where you found my ring. For my ring wouldn’t be anywhere other than my hand unless you took it from my corpse.”

“Were that true, I’d have at least buried you. There was no corpse, and your ring was most certainly not in a burial mound,” Ash assured him.

“Again, we shall see. Let’s go have a look,” the One Emperor declared.

Ash blinked at the sudden brightness that assaulted his eyes and found himself standing in the small valley he had often hidden himself in. Away from the words, eyes, and angry blows of those who would see him wrong for being who he was.

“Let’s have a look,” hissed the One Emperor’s remnant.