Chapter 1: The broken young master seeks power
Immortality or death; I would accept nothing else.
My dantian was broken. But my spirit was unbreakable.
I would do what it took to make myself whole again; whole in body, whole in spirit, and whole in honor. Even now my shattered core bled qi into the chill air. Biting wind carried with it a cold that sunk into my bones.
Wet snow battered my cloak as I tucked it tighter against myself, holding the storm at bay. The veil that hung from the edge of my hat slapped my face in the wind, depositing flakes of snow into my robes.
Steps ahead of me, the snow turned the world white, choking the horizon. A formation deflected and melted the snow from a road of stone bricks that crossed an unending blizzard; water poured in rivulets around my feet.
"How long until our arrival?" I asked, shouting to be heard over the gale.
"Not much farther, now." Feng Wen, my only remaining attendant and closest friend, replied.
He had been with me for as long as I could remember. He crossed the storm with arms folded, walking almost leisurely through the cold. High above me in Realm, this much snow wasn't enough to bring him discomfort. Jealousy burned in my heart.
I was falling behind my peers. Falling behind my younger brother. Every day that I wasn't able to cultivate I fell further and further behind.
It was another hour before we crossed through the storm; just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone. An hour more and there was no sign before us of the blizzard that had choked the sky; open clouds spilled sunshine over a sea of green, interspersed with hundreds of flowers. The distant horizon, far below the mountains that shielded the valley, was choked by a blanket of dark clouds; a natural formation had been subdued, leashing and controlling the very forces of nature to defend and enhance their valley.
Plants grew to monstrous proportions here; the roots of monstrous trees crossed in great archways and formed bridges, roads, and even the foundations of buildings. The smell of medicine crafting rolled out of the valley; an acrid tang from dozens of medicinal halls running at once. We sank into the valley and approached the great hall at the center.
"They're waiting for us." I whispered, looking up at a row of guards who greeted us with weapons in hand. We had to walk up a great staircase cultivated of the roots of trees, each step shaped from living bark. When we finally reached the highest step, the guards slammed their weapons into the ground.
"Snowshadow Hall greets the Young Master Feng."
Snowshadow Hall was painted in two massive characters hanging from a canvas banner that hung heavy and still. This valley had no wind. Just perfect sun and the rush of a river of melting snow.
A dozen cultivators bowed. Adult men and women who had only reached the Second Realm. I restrained the urge to sneer until we were inside the building, crossing through huge, empty halls. Snowshadow Hall was giving us a display of power; rare herbs grew, floating in midair, suspended by formations in the halls. Fragrant medicine scents warred for dominance. Huge windows cut from the living-wood walls gave views of the medicine halls in the distant valley. Despite the entire space barely qualifying as being indoors, the temperature was warm and comfortable.
"They didn't send their best to greet us." I said. It was more bitter than I intended. I was a prince of the Feng, the Young Master of the Iron Mountain. And they left us to navigate their halls alone.
"Are we worthy of receiving their best today?" Feng Wen said, looking to me.
My eyes tightened when our gazes met.
"None of those they sent to greet us were above the Second Realm. Need I remind you? At our last visit, they sent out their Young Master to greet us. Today, she isn't here."
"I heard news she reached the Third Realm in recent months. She is likely consolidating her foundation."
"I reached the Third Realm at fourteen." I said bitterly.
Our conversation ended early; an attendant greeted us with a smile around a corner, leading us deeper in. It was to my surprise that the doors to a great haul opened to the Elders of Snowshadow Hall.
They quieted and stared as we walked forward. I stood under their gazes; they were heavy. Even though the Elders controlled their auras, their gazes still felt like a physical weight.
I clasped my fists, saluted, and bowed deeply. Far deeply than someone of my stature ever should to a subordinate clan.
"The Young Master of the Iron Mountain greets the Matriarch of Snowshadow Hall."
I stayed bowed. But the first response I heard was the sound of the Matriarch taking a long drink of tea.
I looked up.
"Snowshadow Hall recognizes you, Young Master of the Iron Mountain. Stand and make your request."
My eye almost twitched involuntarily.
"I have come to plead for the aid of Snowshadow Hall. Elder…" I grit my teeth. "I've come to humbly request your aid, Matriarch Snowshadow."
I stayed bowing over clasped fists as the Matriarch stared down at me. Her mind was faster than mine, I knew that. I wondered how many considerations she had to weigh to take seconds to reply.
"No." The Matriarch said.
"What?" I asked, rising from my bow.
"You hold no sincerity. And no honor." The Matriarch stood, rising from her seat. She was tall. Very tall. Taller than Feng Wen. She started to descend the steps.
I closed my eyes, felt them twitching beneath, and then threw myself to the floor. Through gritted teeth, I begged.
"Please, Matriarch. I am running out of options."
"You are in disgrace." She said. I heard her steps gain closer.
"Please, Matriarch." Feng Wen said at my side.
I heard the beaded necklace he wore click as he leaned forward, and my eyes snapped open in surprise.
"Oh? And are you asking on behalf of Fang's Iron Mountain, or as… Lord Wen?"
"I am asking as a friend." Wen said. My eyes turned toward him, but I didn't dare remove my forehead from where I pressed it to the floor.
I had no idea Wen knew the Matriarch of Snowshadow. The Matriarch made a huff noise, but a moment later, I was hanging from the air, surrounded in a net of law-controlled qi. It glowed green. My eyes widened, but before I could say anything, a needle of qi pierced into me, so thin and well controlled I barely felt it. The soreness in my body left for a moment as a strand of qi quested through my meridians.
I dropped to the ground, being caught by the qi manipulating the world around me before I fell, and looked up with hopeful eyes.
The Snowshadow Matriarch looked at me with pity.
"Your Dantian is still inside you." She said.
"What does that mean?" Feng Wen asked.
"It means you can't rebuild your cultivation. Nor can it be repaired."
"So there's nothing to be done?" I asked.
The Matriarch shook her head.
"There is nothing we can do for you here. Your core would just absorb any spiritual medicine and leak it away."
"There has to be something. Anything. Please." I begged.
"There is one thing…" The Matriarch started. "It won't heal you. But it might be a start. Deep in the river valley in the south of Feng, there grows an herb that can dissipate your cultivation. With the realm you reached… it will have to have grown unperturbed for decades. If you can find it, refine it, and consume it, you may be able to rebuild your base. Good luck, Scion."
It took a month to find a suitable flower, even making excessive use of expensive relics to sail through the sky and hiring a team to comb the cliffside.
Now a snake the size of a horse circled me, looming around the room. It carefully evaluated the pile of goods we amassed for it. It had taken another month to lead the wagons all the way out here, depositing a fortune worth a year of taxes and tithes gathered from a city.
The snake raised its massive head and talked.
"Thisss transaction has satisfied me. Take it."
I sat in lotus before a monstrous flower whose every petal was the size of my head. It dripped an ichor the red of blood onto the ground, filling the cave with the scent of iron. Red mosses grew in every direction around it like veins, crossing up and over the cave.
With a knife, I cut the plant exactly as instructed before immediately beginning to cycle my qi through the flower and absorb it. I let out a gasp of pain as my qi flowed back through me; now infused with the corrupted element of the flower, it burned as it crossed my meridians.
I compressed it down in my Dantian and struggled. I felt sweat cover me. Time faded as I endured against the pain, cycling and compressing, compressing and cycling. But I could feel it. My dantian was bleeding the medicine as surely as my own qi. The pain lessened across hours; I didn't know if the medicine was growing less potent, if I was growing numb from all the pain, or if, Blood Red Heaven forgiving, I was wearing away my foundation.
I didn't find out how long I had sat in the cave until a week later; I had spent almost three days holding myself conscious, grinding away at my dantian.
But I didn't get the result I wanted. My foundation had been reinforced instead of worn away. Oh, my Dantian had grown weaker; parts of it chipped away further. I bled qi faster.
I ate three more of the flowers before giving up on them and chasing another rumor across the continent.
Waves crashed against the shore as a guide — a Second Realm cultivator, no less — led us to a ruin against the sea. Wet sand crunched under my boots. Here, at the southern tip of Bloodstone, the sky was an ever present gray.
The guide looked at me nervously when we arrived.
"The technique carved inside can dissipate a foundation." He said. "The first Patriarch of the Sinking Mountain rebuilt his foundation here and outlined how. But the technique is dangerous. Forbidden. A single mis-step could kill you instead."
"I understand the risks." I said.
The guide led us through a cave and into a chamber; the cave widened, stalagmites hanging from the ceiling like monstrous teeth; the caves maw opened over the ocean. Waves rolled against the cliff face, white waters sending seafoam up. Here, the instruction for the technique had been cut into the stone.
It only took me two weeks to master it.
Feng Wen stood behind Feng Sai's back, watching in silence as he cultivated the forbidden technique of the Sinking Mountain. He watched as Feng Sai cultivated it first over seven days. Colliding attributes tried their best to wash away his foundation, to destroy the scarred and shattered remains of his Dantian.
The first time Feng Sai cycled the technique, he raised his hands into the air, jetting out the qi he had accumulated all at once. The technique was simple, but rather brilliant; an attempt to jettison your entire dantian. Of course, it didn't work.
Feng Sai vomitted on the floor of the cave, wretching. Feng Wen wrapped him in a blanket and fed him. It took him two days to recover.
He cycled the technique in three days, again releasing a stream of power into the sea. Without control of his aura, he couldn't control qi outside of his body; what Feng Sai was doing was equivalent to screaming out into the void, undirected power lighting up the water.
By the time Feng Sai gave up on this place, he had mastered the technique to the point of being able to use it in a day. The disciple who had led them there bowed and paid respects as Feng Wen carried Feng Sai away in his arms.
Feng Wen accompanied him through dangerous jungles, finding rare herbs and poisons. He accompanied him on the search for ancient treasures, hunted for rare techniques rumored to be able to split a Dantian in two.
None of them worked. And what was worse, every failed attempt seemed to reinforce his foundation deeper.
Feng Wen followed Feng Sai as he was stripped of his title and position of heir. Feng Sai was already broken; already on the edge of giving up. It pushed him over the edge, having since scoured the whole of the land of the Feng Empire and the treasure halls of the Iron Mountain.
His brother had caught up to his realm. He had been dethroned.
And when he gave up, Feng Wen watched him rot. Sai wrapped himself in excess in the heart of the Feng, withering away in alcohol and food, born into the identity of a prince only to have it ripped away. Feng Wen watched him struggle to find a new identity until he could watch no longer.
At the end of another banquet Feng Sai hosted, Feng Sai asked a question.
"How do the mortals live, knowing that they will one day die?" Feng Sai asked. His face covered by dark shadows; he was troubled. He had grown all his life believing he would live for hundreds of years, if not rising all the way to immortality.
"I believe the best way to know that is to walk among them, Young Master. Would you like me to show you?"
"Yes."
Chapter 2: Among Mortal Men
That night, a hundred servants loaded a caravan a dozen wagons strong, full of my favorite foods and luxuries, and we marched south from the capital city beneath the Iron Mountain and into my own territories.
The journey had taken weeks over land. A real cultivator would have been able to fly the distance. Once, with the full wealth of the Feng Empire answering to me, I would've powered a skiff that would've sailed across the sky. Hundreds of spiritstones spent in a night.
I imagined what it would be like to fly the distance the entire time; to see the world pass under you in a blur. Having reached the third realm and tempered my body, my bones were harder than steel, and my strength more than any mortal could muster or bare. I was faster, Stronger. My thoughts moved more fluidly.
Yet I would never be among them; those few who flew above the earth, completely separate from it.
Wen sat across from me in the carriage, arms folded. He looked old by a cultivators standard; each progression through the realms slowed your aging. Wen looked older than the Feng Patriarch, but I knew he was younger. He grew old enough for his hair to start to gray where it hung over his shoulder. A heavy beaded necklace fell from his neck, each individual stone unique in appearance, patterns carved into deep purple jade.
"What was life like for you? Before you were adopted, I mean?" I asked him. I knew at the time that Wen had been raised since young to become a cultivator.
Wen stared at me long and hard.
"There are no words to fully convey my early life. But I can show you, if that is your wish. It will not be the life of an average mortal."
"Show me." I said.
We weren't just visiting a city. We couldn't When the Second Young Master of the Iron Mountain Sect descended to romp through mortal territory, it was an event.
There would be a parade, a feast, a banquet. The local governor and dozens of local cultivators would want to approach me to show me face and court favor. Even as an abandoned son of the great sect that owned the country, the political capital I wielded was too immense to ignore, especially here in the southern backwaters that I tithed.
So when our caravans rolled into the city, it was to the noise of a festival. Bands played on the street. And mortals lined it, waving flags.
"The governor gives out free food and excuses most of the city from work." Wen said, staring out as the wagon rolled along.
We changed into disguises. Over my normal robes, I wore a set of workers robes, wide and flowing with a massive hood to cover my face. The fabric was course and rough, unevenly colored canvas that was dry and hard against my skin.
We passed sections of the crowd cheering my name.
"We greet the Second Young Master of the Iron Mountain!"
I flinched at the greeting.
Even the mortals far flung from the capital and the heart of the Iron Mountain knew that I had fallen, that I was no longer the First Young Master.
The few cultivators we saw saluted us fist to chest.
When the wagons turned around a bend and into the city, we made our move. Kicking from the wagon, we darted into the alleyways, long robes fluttering behind us. Our guards looked the other way as we left the city's thoroughfare.
We sailed through the air, crossing a dozen strides with every step. Seconds from the main street, the well painted and maintained buildings faded away for chipped wood and cracked exteriors. They flew by, giving way to buildings that had patchwork repairs.
As the buildings shrunk, Feng Wen led me up the top of them. He jumped off a wall and onto a roof. We crossed through the rotting section of the city, flying above it.
It was like the world was diseased. Men and women began to repopulate the street, ones who hadn't gone to the parade. They wore rags.
The cobble streets turned to mud as the buildings turned rotten. More than once, I lost my footing sailing over the roofs as rotting wood exploded beneath me. The torn over, muddy roads shrunk as the slums bloated, shacks built atop shacks built atop buildings spilling into the street or falling apart in disrepair, wild expansions blocking avenues.
I had never seen anything like it.
I leaked qi like a broken cup through my shattered core. But my body had been tempered, my meridians opened. Loose qi floated through me like smoke as I followed Feng Wen. But my body was still enhanced, still far beyond any mortal, so I still had yet to tire.
Feng Wen stopped, pulled back his hood, and sniffed at the air.
"This way." He said.
And we were off again, shooting over roof tops until we arrived at a section of the city full of burned out buildings. A wall of burnt out stone buildings was broken open in a great scar; their exposed insides revealed a bustling market spilling out food and a crowd hundreds strong. They crossed makeshift bridges and buildings assembled out of scrap.
The air smelled like spice and cooking meat. A crowd hundreds strong choked the streets, clogging pathways and obstructing our way. It was a roar of noise; a hundred conversations became unt
"Stay close." Feng Wen said, dropping down the side of a building and into a road so closed together his shoulders scraped the nearest shacks.
I followed.
"We're going in there?" I asked, aghast.
Wen turned sideways. I thought he was going to reply to me, but instead a giant of a man, covered in scars and knives, pushed by him. My hand fell to the hilt of my sword. But the man nodded respectfully as he passed. I didn't sense a drop of qi from him; even deadened as my qi senses were, I should have felt something.
"Was that a mortal?" I asked.
"It was." Feng Wen replied.
Unease compounded in me as we pushed through the crowd. My mind didn't leave the mortal we had passed. A mortal carrying weapons. Knives were useless versus spirit-beasts, and it would take dozens of mortals to injure a cultivator even in the first realm. Which meant those knives weren't for either of those things; they were for other mortals.
"The governor maintains no order here." I said, trailing Feng Wen as he pushed his way through the alleyway and into the crowd.
Trash littered the street. A stall on a raised platform next to me had skewers of wild birds rotating over fire; the smell of spices and cooking was overwhelming. Grease dripped onto charred iron grills. The shop keep caught me staring, leaned over the food stall and grinned with half a mouth's teeth.
"Bird for a quarter stone! Home cooked recipe! Freshly caught today!"
I paused for a moment. Just a moment. Feng Wen shoved a bag of coin into my hand.
"I don't want…"
"We'll take two. And a table." Feng Wen interrupted me.
The vendor looked Feng Wen up and down, greedy like a shark, before turning back and eying me hungrily. I passed a few coins to his hand; his eyes widened. I had paid too much. I didn't care.
But he served me like a prince.
I sat the bag of coins on the counter beside as the man brought plates of food, fawning over me.
"I'm not eating this." I said, frowning at the plate. "Is this what I'm here to see?"
"No, Young Master." Feng Wen said, smiling calmly. "Be patient. Ah… here it comes."
I sensed it too late; a small arm and small hand darted from the crowd, grabbing the coin pouch.
"You — "
I turned and snapped my arm toward him, but he dissolved into the crowd, and then he was gone. My chair toppled over as I shot up and after him, leaping forward over the crowd to land in an open area. I caught a glance of him crossing a corner and gave chase through the slums crammed into the ruins.
Crowds blocked my way. I tried to navigate around them, running across the walls and leaping over them, but eventually I gave up any pretense, simply shoving the mortals out of my way.
They would be fine.
The pickpocket — thief — urchin — knew the city well. They navigated through passages often too small for me to fit through. I slapped poorly assembled brick and nailed wood out of my way, following regardless. He took turns and curves, slid under tables and around stalls.
I threw them out of my way. Finally, I crossed a corner, pinning him.
Feng Wen already had a hold on the thief's arm.
"Let go of me!"
There was a terrible snap.
I stared as the boy collapsed to the ground, screaming and crying. Almost a minute passed by before he began to collect himself, dragging himself away.
"You barely broke his bone. Why is he still crying?" I asked. Wen stood over the thief, arms folded.
"He is just a boy." Wen said.
The boy on the ground looked the same age as me.
"What are we doing here?" I asked. He let out wretched sobs, turning back and seeing that he had no where to run.
"What the hell are you?" He asked Wen, staring up. He was crying. Blood leaked from his arm.
Wen leaned down beside him.
"This is the young master of the Feng family. Pay your respects."
"Fuck you." The boy said.
Wen chuckled.
"Should we… break his other arm for that?" I asked. "The punishment for dishonouring the Feng Family is… immediate execution." I had seen it happen before. Father said that commoners didn't know what was best for them.
But this was new, uncertain territory. I didn't know where Wen was leading me.
The young man spat on Wen, which made him chuckle harder.
"This boy has fire in his spirit. Do I have your permission to heal him?"
"Will it help me better understand how mortals live?" I asked, still staring at the defiant snarl of the boy.
"I think so."
"Then you have my permission."
"Hold still now, boy. I have to line your bones up or they'll fuse improperly."
Wen picked the boy up like he was a feral cat. The boy kicked and thrashed, but Wen ignored him, overpowering him with one hand as he lined the boys arm up, fixing the odd angle it had bent at. He fed the boy a pill. With a glowing flush of green light and a horrid noise of shifting flesh, the boys arm was healed.
Tears covered his face.
"The punishment for a thief is the loss of a hand." I said, hooking my thumb on the hilt of my blade. I grimaced.
"Do you want to enforce those laws, Young Master?" Feng Wen asked me. It wasn't rhetorical. He stared at me with calm calculation.
"Please, just don't hurt my family." The boy said. He was no longer angry. He was begging now.
"Take us to them." Wen told him.
We crossed through the tight streets of the slums, pressing through thin alleys and streets between hastily constructed shacks.
"What's your name?" Wen asked the boy. Wen gripped one of the boys arms, stopping him from running.
He looked reluctant to reply. I stared hard at him for a moment.
"I am called Fang." He said.
"Fang." Wen chuckled. "How auspicious."
He led us to a tiny house with a smaller door. The humans of the slums were thin and small. The boy looked at us in fear.
"Please don't hurt my family." Fang said. His eyes were pleading.
Wen looked at me, waiting for my confirmation.
"We won't." I said.
Feng pushed the door open hesitantly. It creaked on its hinges. We followed inside; the floor was dirty, packed earth. Cramped windows let rays of light that shot against the wall and did a poor job at lighting the room.
"Mom! I'm home. I brought… guests." Fang said. He eagerly licked his fingers and tried to rub away the dried blood on his arm.
"Guests?" A woman's voice asked from another room. There was banging and a grunt as she pushed herself out of a bedroom. Her hair was a frazzled mess, hanging over a face as pale as a ghost.
Fang didn't meet her eyes.
The woman coughed.
"Little Fang, why didn't you tell me you were bringing guests? I will make food." She said. She looked me and Wen up and down before struggling across the room to a tiny sink full of water. "Please, sit!"
Fang led us to a table of splintered wood, surrounded by mismatched, creaking chairs that sat unevenly. There were enough seats for three.
Wen stood beside us, staring at the woman as she pulled out chicken bones and struggled to start a fire to cook them.
"Your furniture looks like you collected it from a dump." I told Fang. His mother slumped over in the corner.
"We take what we can get. Do you know how expensive furniture is?" Fang asked.
"No." I said.
Wen walked across the room and put a hand on the woman's shoulder. She flinched.
"Allow me to cook for you." He said.
"We — "
"Allow me." He said. She startled. Wen guided her across the room, sitting her down in the chair across from us.
She coughed again before looking between me and Fang.
Her eyes analyzed me.
I never had a mom. I stared back.
"I am called Lin." She said, doing her best attempt at a smile. Many of her teeth were missing. Her face was gaunt from up close.
"Where is Fang's father?"
Lin coughed again.
"He passed years ago. Bloodstone sickness." Fang said. His voice was hushed. He directed more fear in his expression at his mother than at me.
"He was a good man." Lin said, nodding and smiling sadly. "And you? What are you called?"
To the side, I heard Wen banging together pots and pans. I leaned around the table, trying to see into the tiny kitchen room. Wen must have had those in his storage ring. I had sold my own storage ring to afford more trips on spirit-stone fueled skiffs across the continent.
"I am Fe — " I stopped, not using my family name. "Apologies. I am called Sai." I said, trying my best to smile earnestly back.
Lin's eyes narrowed, then her eyes flashed between me and Wen's back. He was pulling out an entire kitchen — including tables. Furniture spilled out into the living room. Fang also stared dumbly at the display.
"I hope my boy didn't give you too much trouble." She said. She turned to look at Fang, examining him more closely, and she paled at the sight of dried blood on his arm.
Fang continued staring at the table.
"He's in good health." I said, unsure of what else to say. "We… he broke his arm, and we healed it."
"Oh. Oh!" Lin said, smiling.
"What is your family name?" I asked. She frowned.
"We have no family name." She said.
"You weren't given one? Why don't you pick one?" I asked, confused.
Lin laughed, then coughed. Fang continued staring at the table.
"We have no need for anything that fancy." She smiled cynically at herself. "Fang, have you thanked this nice boy for healing you?"
Fang looked up, locking eyes with me. His face hardened, then softened.
"Thank you." He said.
"You're welcome." I replied earnestly. We hadn't executed him. That was more than mortals deserved.
Lin repeatedly swallowed, making a chewing motion as Wen cooked and the house filled with spices. He brought plates to the table — Feng Family plates, complete with the character for our family name on the bottom — and we ate.
Fang and Lin ate with their hands, throwing the food back as fast as they could.
"Could I trouble you for more?" Lin asked.
I smiled.
"I love food." I said. "This noodle dish features meat we imported from the Ice Mountain. They say it comes from a great spirit beast. Wen, shall we have a second round?"
Wen hadn't put the kitchen away, but he shook his head no.
"It's a bad idea to eat too much while starving. You could go into shock." He said.
Lin's face dropped, her expression going hollow.
"Starving?" I asked.
Fang slapped the table, rising to his feet. His expression turned angry.
"I told you to eat first. Have you not been eating? Where has all the money I've been bringing home been going?"
"Little Fang… I can't use blood money." Lin said. Her hands were shaking on the table. I could seen the veins in them.
"It's not — I haven't killed anyone!" Fang shouted.
"You think I don't know! You think your mother doesn't know! Who raised you to rob people?!" She said, raising her own voice. Then she quieted, turning to me and Wen, and bowing over a clasped fist salute. "Sorry for yelling in your presence, young master."
Fang's face shifted from anger to his mom to horror as he realized.
"You… you're Feng Sai." Fang said. His expression turned back to anger. "Fuck you! And your entire family!"
Lin went pale as a ghost as Fang stomped around the table and to the door.
"Should I stop him, young master?"
"Let him go." I said. He continued stomping out into the alleyway. As he opened the door, a man leered inside.
"Lin?" He asked. "What is that smell?"
There was a mob in the alley. The smell of spirit beast meat and spice was beyond pungeant; dozens of people had lined up.
"Come inside." Wen said with authority. The man stepped in. Wen dragged Fang's seat around to be near the door and invited the man to sit, putting a plate in front of him.
"This… what is the price?" The man asked. There was fear in his eyes.
"Just answer a few of this young man's questions." Wen said.
I leaned forward.
"Are you starving?" I asked.
"And don't lie." Wen said.
We spent two hours interviewing and feeding the people on the street.
"Why don't you just buy more food?" I asked.
There wasn't enough for everyone. It cost too much.
"Why don't you just work?" I asked.
They had kids to raise. Illnesses to overcome.
"Doesn't the governer offer work?"
The mining sapped their lives. They paid a cost in years that they didn't earn back in coin.
"Can't you cultivate?"
Laughter. Realization. He was serious. Cultivation is unreachable to mortals.
"Don't you hate the feeling of being powerless to change your destiny?"
We all are powerless to change our destiny.
And on and on and on. I spent every minute I could learning how my own people lived. But eventually, I had to go. I would be expected at the banquet at the governors hall.
Two hours later, we attended the governer's banquet.
This was my city. I owned it. Every cultivator owned hundreds of territories, given to us like investments in our youth, our spending money coming directly from their taxes and exports. I owned a dozen territories like this one that I had never visited.
The local business and land owners laughed and celebrated my presence at the banquet. I stared at the furniture. Fine wood, hand carved and imported. Rugs that cost more than Lin's house. Half eaten plates of food.
They wasted more food than Lin's family would ever see.
I couldn't enjoy the banquets anymore.
We spent a month in the city.
"Can't we feed them all?" I asked Wen.
"We can. We can afford to feed them in every city under your control. But that won't fix the underlying problems."
I had enough money. And my cultivation was barely advancing. I didn't need to invest in so much spirit stone if I couldn't even use all of it.
"But we can start there." I said. "Feed them all. And find a better candidate for governor."
At the time I made that decision, I was thinking of the people. I couldn't have known it was the decision that would, years later, lead me back onto the path of immortality.
Chapter 3: The Grave in the heart of the Bloodstone Continent
Throughout the Bloodstone continent, I, Feng Sai, am the single most qualified person to state that all cultivators are utter fools.
I should know; I was one. Feng Sai the cultivator died in a sand covered arena years ago, crushed by my father's hands. The audience had roared at the spectacle.
Let it be known that the Patriarch of the Iron Mountain has never been known to be kind.
They say that when you walk the path of immortality, you shed your humanity, step by step. They're right. But when I shed my path to immortality, I became something entirely new.
I was young and stupid then; as all cultivators are. I believed myself to stand above the ranks of the myriad mortals whose backs upheld my family's empire. As all cultivators do.
Without cultivators, no mortal city can survive against the spirit-beasts that roam the Bloodstone continent. For every treasure buried here in a lost legacy and ancient ruin, there is a danger proportional. For every blood-red spirit-stone ripped from the earth there was a monster ready to rip apart a mortal for lunch. And for every field of tilled land, there was ten times as much untamed wilderness.
But without mortals, there could be no cultivators.
Mortals built the cities. They excavated the ruins. They mined the spiritstone. And they farmed the land.
Cultivators needed to sleep; that meant houses, beds and walls. They needed the resources the mortals provided. And they needed the food they produced. All cultivators did was kill.
The great sects on the mountains needed fuel; the mortals paid a tithe in children, fed them into a machine that crushed them down until their sons and daughters were dead and only cultivators remained.
Do you know how many mortals die for every cultivator who reaches the Second Realm? Forced into the fields, tithed until their crops were gone. Forced into the mines until their hands bled, left to starve when they couldn't meet their quotas. Pressed into service as fodder atop our walls only to be ripped limb from limb.
I know the number now.
These were lessons I learned myself. But the first lesson I learned was the one I had been taught by my defeat years ago.
Our Feng Dynasty had build an empire atop the spirit stone mines that ran rich through our country. But we had never studied the geology that enables them. We knew that veins ran east to west, that they flowed like rivers, smaller tributaries feeding into gigantic veins that stabbed deep into the earth until they could no longer be followed.
But no cultivator had ever seen fit to map them out. No governor had combined the information of multiple mining operations, painting a whole picture of the veins of stone that criss crossed our country.
A few months ago, a mining foreman who had risen through the recently implemented exam system — my recent implemented exam system — pleaded for an audience.
He offered incomplete maps of the spirit stone veins throughout our territory. And the maps displayed half of a pattern. The spirit stones all stretched from a single region in our territory.
We agreed to his request, collecting data from the dozen territories to build a complete picture. Dead in the center of the land I controlled, and in the center of the spirit veins that ran through our entire country was a stretch of desert, lifeless land filled with ruins and abandoned. Or so I had thought.
"The city of Sandgrave lies there, Young Master." Feng Wen said with a grimace, pouring over the assembled maps in the center of a gigantic planning room. Scholars clamored around the table. A few looked up.
"There is no city in the desert!" A scholar said.
"Sandgrave?" I asked.
"A rogue cultivator city." Feng Wen replied, to the entire room. "It's a den of crime and smuggling. Outlaws hide there within the desert, deep enough that mundane beasts of burden will often die on the way. They cross a span of oasis's that form when the Stormwall breaks."
The room erupted into discussion.
"Any serious effort at taking control of the city under the Feng banner will require more convenient access than waiting for the Stormwall to break." I said. "What about a formation powered road to keep the deserts heat at bay? Like the Moonshadow's safe path through their ever present blizzard."
"That would bankrupt us." A scholar in my personal employ immediately replied.
"We don't have to build an entire road. Just enough formations to make the oasises and desert lakes permanent." Another chimed in. Mortal formation experts were rare — they were unable to actually power and create the formations themselves, which left them with pages and pages of untested theories. But that same limitation caused them to have ideas no cultivator would think of.
Under an ambitious plan proposed by a dozen mortal scholars, we tamed the desert. We carved obelisks from the mountain stone of the Stormwall that pulled down water element qi, condensing water into lakes, and brought the desert to heel.
Then we tamed the city, executing its criminal lords, enforcing a tax code and importing food, all while launching a quarrying operation that ripped open the desert itself.
The scholars assured me we would find what we sought at the bottom — a bleeding heart of spiritstone, a vein so massive the income from mining it would dwarf the sum of the Feng territories entirely. An open air quarry that would produce wealth hand over fist — enough to feed every mortal in my territory.
We refined thousands of pounds of sand into thousands of pounds of spirit-glass, shipping it across my territory. We built mortal institutions — great colleges that pooled the sum of our knowledge into a city that rapidly grew.
Only dozens of feet beneath the sand, we found something. We expected a heart of Spiritstone worth enough to found a nation. Instead, we found a ruin, uncovering rooftops buried beneath the sand. And we dug deeper still.
Mortals moved by the hundreds to Sandgraves, scholars and laborers in search of a better life under our reforms, and the city grew. We built atop ancient stone ruins and even carved out houses inside of them, digging downward in the sand to reveal a labyrinthine city; a monolithic ruin, all carved from the earth, and all showed no sign of habitation.
We excavated sand from the ruin, unburying traps as we went deeper. A maze of tunnels criss crossed deep below. Sand seeped into previously uncovered passages. The simple excavation turned into the work of years.
We found the heart of Spiritstone long before we reach the bottom of the labyrinth — and we didn't tell anyone. No cultivator would even deign to visit Sandgrave — a city now known for being a city of mortals, where the qi was so thin spiritbeasts choked on it.
So we mined it slowly, kept it secret, and kept digging downward.
On the Bloodstone continent, almost every great and ancient cultivator left behind a legacy. They were typically dungeons full of challenges, testing the character of potential inheritors and rewarding them for every step along the path. None of them were as massive as the ruin we dug out of the heart of Sandgrave. None of them were as ancient.
And none were as empty.
But we preservered. Over years, our scholars compared the architecture to known ruins across the world. We found no matches for the style of building. And we found no treasure. But we kept digging. And we kept building.
We built more roads that crossed the great desert expanse in the heart of the Feng. Traders no longer had to loop around the desert; by passing through Sandgrave, they could go directly through it. And our city became a hub of trade and center of power. Eventually, we no longer even needed the Spiritstone mines; just the taxes we took were enough to fund our city and schools.
But I was raised as a cultivator. And cultivators were always greedy for more. So we expanded the schools further, build industry for trade, and with the help of mortal formation masters, built farms in the desert; they were nothing like I would have imagined, buried underground and vertical, but they produced grain as well as fields.
The exploration of the labyrinth had become a distant concern to me, all but forgotten. Reports passed over my desk of new depths we found. Even weak treasures. But there were no manuscripts left from whoever had buried this legacy.
So the day we found the artifact, it came as a surprise.
"We greet the Young Master!" A dozen low ranking cultivator guards saluted with clasped fists as I descended toward the Labyrinthine maze leading deeper into the city.
A downward ramp of packed sand led into the labyrinth, either side flanked by bowing guards. Above and around me, hundreds of lanterns fluttered in the desert night like blinking stars. The streets were filled with a hundred laborers shoveling away sand that accumulated during the windy day.
My robes, loose fitting and cool for the desert wind, flowed around me. Feng Wen stood on my right. He wore an unusual grimace on his face, hand resting on his sword.
Feng Fang stood on my left. He didn't walk with the air of a born cultivator or noble; he was crude in a way that was immediately recognizable. But he had a pride of his own.
"Feng Ruoying, reporting to the Young Master!" One of the youngest guards, a scarred women, pivoted and bowed as we approached the descent into the tunnels. Mortals looked down curiously from the city rising from the sand around us.
"Rise." I said. "Report."
I looked her up and down. Ruoying was one of the rogue cultivators reintegrated into Sandgrave after we took it over and decapitated most of the criminal organizations leeching off of it.
But her foundation was still wild and unstable, her inherited attributes unusual and unsuitable for most cultivation paths. She would likely never reach the Second Realm due to her foundation.
Most of these petty criminals had no skills other than fighting. And they weren't good at that. In Sandgrave, we had no need for cultivators to defend the walls from spiritbeast hordes. The desert was empty.
We carved out a life for people like her anyway.
"We found an anomaly in the ruins. We believe… we believe we've reached the bottom."
I looked to Feng Wen. He still carried a serious look on his face.
"What's wrong, old man?" Feng Fang asked.
Feng Wen's expression didn't change.
"There's something strange down there. I don't know how we didn't sense it before."
I focused on my qi sense. But I didn't feel anything. My senses weren't as strong ever since my core had been shattered, though.
"Don't feel it." Feng Fang said. "This a second realm thing?"
"Lead the way." I turned and waved to the guard. With a nod, she turned and rushed down the corridor.
The other cultivators flanked us, guarding us as we descended.
It took us over an hour to descend over handmaid ramps of packed sand and sandstone brick. A series of buckets on rope carried sand away over our head, occasionally spilling out over us.
Torches and lamps gave way to spiritstone lights deeper down where pockets of bad air rested.
My mortal scholars said that air pumps were enough to prevent them, but I wouldn't risk their lives on that.
In the Feng territories outside of my control, it was well known that the lives of mortals were cheaper than spiritstone lamps.
I sensed what Feng Wen had from outside the tunnels. The qi in the air shifted. Twisted. Bent. It was wrong intrinsically, like its very existence railed against our world and sought to tear away from it.
Whatever it was, I knew one thing immediately.
This is why there was no qi in the air across this desert.
The cultivator guards led us to an ornate pillar rising from the center of a chamber bigger than any other I had seen in the labryinth. Sand still marred the floor, but it was clear that this building had never been filled with it. Rickety structures hung spiritstone lamps that dimly illuminated sections of a rich, painted ceiling.
The ceiling depicted a war.
At the edges, figures of purest black emerged from dark water, fighting with and being torn apart by men and women with glowing wings and halos of fire. Behind the army of winged men, a forest of trees spilled white light from the ceiling like spiritstone lamps. They emerged from a dark as black as night.
At the center of it all was a figure of a man, swords crossed through his heart. Red veins stretched out from him. His expression was a horrifying, realistic rictus of death.
I could hear Feng Wen's knuckles tighten on his sword. My own heart was in my throat. There were no images or records of written words in the labyrinth until just now.
At the center of it all was a smaller room, thrusting toward the ceiling like a pillar. Ornate doors of complex filligree surrounded each side.
"When did you find this?" Feng Fang asked hurriedly. "You had time to unearth all of this?"
"Reporting to the mayor of Sandgrave…" Ruoying started. "This room was empty of sand when we opened the doors. However, we have failed to open the inner doors."
I started walking toward the pillar. Something about the doors called to me. A step away, I hesitated.
"You weren't able to open the doors?" I asked. I needn't have. I could see the marks where swords had failed to cut through the metal.
There was no force calling me here, no magnetic attraction pulling me to the doors. I felt like I stood on the precipice of something. Years of work had accumulated to this moment.
I placed my hand on the door and pushed.
The qi in the air shifted. The slow ambient swirl turned into a raging storm as every ounce of power in the labyrinth was sucked downward in a single moment. I flinched, trying to pull backward. White hot pain and power lanced up my arm. I recognized it; a foreign qi forced itself into my meridians, backwards, rampaging inside of me. I grunted my teeth and tried to pull my arm back.
"Step back Young Master." Wen said.
"I can't!" My face was pale. I buckled as the power reached my dantian, piling in, pooling. Then, in an instant, it poured over my entire body.
With a grimace, Wen raised his sword. And then he cut.
An inch from my arm, the world froze.
A blue box appeared in front of me.
[Authority Recognized. New user detected: Feng Sai. Language integrated. Anti-Light Scepter integration initiated. Please complete first activation to finish integration.]
[Damage to the user's spirit has been detected. Damage will be repaired. Repair progress: 1%]
[Time Dilation Active]
[Teleport now? Refusing will end Time Dilation and begin recharge.]
"Teleport where?" I didn't say, because my mouth didn't open. Nothing in the room moved. Feng Wen's blade descended almost imperceptibly slowly.
[Countdown: 10]
More boxes were popping up without disappearing. I couldn't move, couldn't react; my body flooded with foreign power.
The count down didn't give me time to think. If I said no, I would lose my arm.
The prompt said it would repair my core.
[Count Down: 7]
If I lost my arm, the path to cultivation would be broken for me. I would never be able to reach it again. I had cast aside that life, rejected the path to immortality, and lived among the mortals. The path was already broken.
[Countdown: 5]
Of course I wouldn't choose to teleport. I had no idea the risks or challenges I would face. There was no way healing came for free — I knew that. I couldn't be so greedy as to try anyway. I could get a prosthetic arm. I —
[Countdown: 2]
I was lying to myself.
[Feng Sai has initiated teleportation]
Chapter 4: Power in Numbers
I threw myself backwards as reality itself slipped sideways, the world tilting beneath my feet. Something grabbed me and pulled. With a pop, the room dissolved. Forces larger than my comprehension shifted around me.
Then I hit the ground. I gasped, my lungs burning like I just surfaced from underwater, desperate for air. My legs took a moment to agree that they could hold me upright.
A second ago, Wen was ready to sever my arm.
Now the room was empty. Empty of people, and empty of sand.
My heart beat in my ears with a warm rush. Out of years of ingrained habit, I pulled qi in along my skin, then winced when it bled from my core like an open wound.
This wasn't Sandgrave. There was no place in Sandgrave that the sand didn't touch; no place where it didn't build up steadily in dusty corners and darkened rooms. And the artifact at the center of the room — the Anti-Light Scepter, it had called itself — it was gone.
I calmed slowly, hand resting on the handle of my sword.
This room had never been opened. The doors were still sealed shut. But the imprint of where the Scepter had stood was visible; there was a six sided depression on the ground where it once rested; years or decades had warped and discolored the floor.
"What is this?" I asked the empty room, staring up at a ceiling that held the exact same relief as the dungeon beneath Sandgrave. I crouched, gripping my sword, a grimace twisting my face.
"The artifact promised to heal my core." I said, looking in the direction of the hexagonal depression on the ground. That was ridiculous. I had tried for years to find an answer with the weight of an empire behind me. To find one in the heart of a desert was an insane proposition. But… "I've actually been teleported."
If it had actually teleported me, would it actually heal my core?
I stared up at the unnerving relief carved into the ceiling again. I wasn't willing to believe it so easily.
"Wen? Fang?" I shouted. My voice echoed in the barely lit room. The only light source was the glowing reliefs on the ceiling.
I turned back to the entrance of the chamber. I needed to head out of here — to climb to the surface. This room was a perfect mirror of the dark heart of the labyrinth beneath Sandgrave.
"If this room is mirrored to the finest and smallest detail of the ceiling's art, then the labyrinth above is surely mirrored as well." I spoke aloud to an empty room. Then I sighed. For years, Wen had stood by my side. It was so rare that I was ever so alone. "I should have taken more care to memorize the labyrinth."
There was no sense in regretting it now. I needed to get to the surface and discover how far from home I was. I took a single step toward the door, ready to begin my ascent through another empty labyrinth.
Something rattled against the doors. I crouched and moved forward still, freeing my sword a few inches from the sheath at my waist. I had no idea what was out here, no idea where I was, alone and scattered.
The doors swung inward after a cacophony of pounding and scratching.
Five misshapen beasts in a mockery of man stumbled inside, covered with expressions of panic and grunting. My face contorted in involuntary disgust.
Any spiritbeast that bent themselves into the shape of a man were exterminated with prejudice. At the higher realms, spiritbeasts could shift their bodies and appearance, and their kin could inherent those changes. Wherever I was, it was far from civilization. Not only that, I was far from Sandgrave; that qi barren desert couldn't support any spiritbeast's life.
So it fell onto me to exterminate them, if I was able. And I was. The qi in the air barely shifted at their arrival. My senses were still sharp enough to know that. At best, they would have opened meridians, enough to enhance their speed, strength, and durability. Not enough to stand against me.
I freed my blade and stared the monsters down; it took them a moment to notice me, grunting angrily and aiming their weapons. Their skin was a dark, sickly green, and they stumbled, bleeding from fresh cuts and staggering forward. They carried a mix of rusted, jagged daggers, slings and spears.
With one step forward, I swung, dancing through the first form of the Feng Family Sword Style. The style pulled me in an agile motion across the ground, a strong glide that ended with my blade passing through the first spiritbeast's neck.
Even its spine barely provided any feedback as the blade effortlessly beheaded the monster.
I targeted the healthiest of them first; one carrying a sling. Then I landed behind them, between the monsters and the exit.
My sword was already drawn back for a thrust. But before I could stab forward, I was interrupted. I flinched back, dodging away from the box that appeared in front of me in midair.
It followed me. I continued pacing backward until I hit the wall. Then I read it.
[You reached level 1! Status screen enabled.]
"Status? Get rid of this!"
Another box appeared, this time blocking the entire view in front of me.
There was an explosion as a rock launched from a sling ahead of me impacted the wall at my side, shattering stone and bombarding me with rock shrapnel.
I rolled to the left as another rock came whistling, again exploding on the stone. The box followed me. I stepped forward experimentally. It maintained the same distance from me, blocking off all of my view. I needed to make a decision — try to investigate this strange illusory formation to disable it, or fight without seeing.
[Damaged Spirit Repair Progress: 2%]
"End report! Dismiss! Close!"
I had fought blindfolded before. I could do it again. Hours of training in the dark paid off; fighting against cultivators double my height and strength, listening for the whistle of wooden weapons in the air, where failing to hear them meant bruises piling up against me taught me lessons I could never forget.
A spear stabbed through the illusory status wall in front of me; I met it with the edge of my blade, a ringing noise echoing in the cavernous room as I leaned forward and stabbed into the monster's neck. With a step forward, the monster was revealed, my status box behind it.
It clutched at the blade in its neck. I ripped it out and kicked the monster away before stepping backward, avoiding a monster at the edge of my awareness and countering with a wide swing. It screamed and fell to the ground.
With two more swings, the remaining spiritbeasts died.
[You reached level 2! 2 attribute points available!]
My chest calmed. I tried to reach out and touch the status sheet, but my fingers passed through it. Instead of a vocal command, I focused on it.
In truly high caliber formations, some of the controls were embedded into qi and willpower. But without my core, I could barely thread qi, let alone will. I tried anyway to reach out and shut the projection off.
To my surprise, it closed. With a focused burst of Willpower, I opened it again.
[Congratulations on surviving your first combat! You have 2 attribute points available.]
[Feng Sai][Level 2][Class Unlocked at Level 10]
[Health: 97%][Mana: 0%]
[Attributes]
[Unallocated: 2]
[Strength 30][Constitution 30]
[Intelligence 20][Willpower 20]
[Agility 20][Perception 20]
[Body Constitution]
[Storm/Lightning Major Attribute Spirit Roots]
[Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repair Progress: 5%][Accumulate additional ??? to accelerate repair]
[Cultivation]
[Path of the Grim Tempest Scion]
[0% Third Realm, Core Formation]
[+10 STR, +10 CON, +10 INT, +10 WIL, +10 AGI, +10 PER]
[Darkwind Sword Art X] [+10 STR, +10 CON]
[Skills]
[NONE]
I took in the screen. I read it once. Then I read it again.
"This is wrong."
I trained in the Feng Family Sword Arts. The Grim Tempest and their Scions were the premier clan of the continent — the ruling sect who only accepted the greatest young masters across the world. Whatever the System was, it couldn't be trusted to be accurate.
Unless my father — the Patriarch of the Iron Mountain — had secretly stolen and trained his sons in this technique. But that was only a small thing; the bigger thing was that the system stated my repair progress had increased all the way to 5%.
I frowned and focused inward, channeling qi along my meridians and into my core. I was very familiar with the extent of the damage; my dantian sat like scarred over flesh, a dull ache that bled away qi. But as it leaked out the power I accumulated, I noticed there was the smallest difference; a tiny, practically nonexistence decrease in the amount of power that was bleeding away into the air.
My heart raced.
The system really could repair it.
I looked back up to the attribute points. The numbers and stats seemed to measure my Strength and Speed directly. I was familiar with the concept; I had assisted my mortal scholars in demonstrating the exact lifting power of different cultivators. They made a novel system of standardizing weights and testing how much each cultivator could lift. The System attested that I gained Strength from my martial arts. I couldn't disagree.
But it also said that I had two unallocated points. I focused hard on the word, trying to bring up a description.
[New Skill: Appraisal 1(Common)][+1 Perception]
[Focus Willpower and Perception to appraise an object, revealing information from the System. A higher level reveals more information.]
[Allocate attribute points to increase your attribute pool.]
I gained a skill from focusing. And the skill raised my attributes farther.
It couldn't actually be that easy. The attributes I did have came from my cultivation — years of effort and training spent to enhance my body. I cautiously reached out and pointed toward Intelligence. It was the lowest of my attributes. With a mental switch, I pushed one of the unallocated points into it, and then focused inward.
I could feel the change. It was tiny, nearly imperceptible. But my thoughts sped up the tiniest amount. I put the second point into Intelligence as well; the increase was there, but seemed smaller.
Finally, I looked toward what I cared about the most in this entire stat sheet.
[Storm/Wind Dantian: Shattered][Repairing: 5%][Accumulate additional ??? to accelerate repair]
I [Appraised] the question marks. It was like pressing a button in my mind, not unlike shaping a technique from qi.
[???]
[Error: You do not have the requisite Authority to be aware of ???]
[Accumulate additional Authority]
[Accumulate ??? through Advancement]
[Advancement of the Ludus Arbor: Level 2]
[Advancement of the Heavenly Pillar: Third Realm, Shattered core]
I read the words over and over before dismissing the window entirely and sitting in the dim light cast by the ceiling's glowing relief.
There was only one part of the words that mattered to me.
I 'leveled up' by killing spiritbeasts. Killing spiritbeasts helped me accumulate something. And accumulating whatever that was accelerated my healing.
I would kill as many spiritbeasts as it took to be whole again. A small slaughter like this was a tiny price to pay for salvation. And if I was lucky, I could do it on my way out of the labyrinth.
The chamber I teleported into had remained untouched for centuries; that much was obvious. The passage outside glowed with dim, smooth light that poured across the floor, illuminating the pile of dirt and muck that had built up against the door.
Perhaps the center chamber had been sealed by a formation that dissipated once I absorbed the Anti-Light Scepter. Damage and scratches had accumulated over what must have been years against the complex, filigreed doors.
Water rushed through the floors of the lowest hallways, disappearing into drains at the side of the halls. I didn't know to where from there, but I heard the noise of rushing water beneath me.
I had emerged into a labyrinthine maze marked with the remnants of what must have been hundreds of occupants across centuries. Piles of dirt mounted so high they blocked off hallways; elsewhere, they had been carved through. Trash and detritus and bones piled up in the room's edges, and mud and dirt sloshed around my feet.
The hallways ran red with blood where the fresh corpses of monsters cooled. After a moment of hesitation, I focused on one of the corpses, trying to use [Appraisal] on something outside of the system.
[Corpse, Goblin Warrior, Level 11]
"I've never heard of a goblin before…" I said, kicking the corpse over. It was a cruel and twisted rendition of a human. The cultivators who governed this land had slacked in their obligations.
Like the others, it bore the marks of combat; the half broken shaft of an arrow protruded from its stomach where it turned the sloshing water in the labrinthe red with its blood. Elsewhere, there were clear marks of cutting from swords. Not the ragged, broken kind the goblins had been using, either; sophisticated, sharp blades had lacerated this corpse, and every one like it in the hall. The five that reached the central chamber weren't alone. And whatever had fought them was up ahead.
But I heard nothing else in the halls; and it was impossible to be quiet here where the water rose around my feet and splashed with each step. The glowing lights embedded in the ceiling were reflected in the surface of the rushing water. It was clear that this place was not a perfect mirror of the labyrinth beneath Sandgrave.
Doors sat broken or rusted open in sections of the hall, the insides plundered. Chunks of metal and broken tools sat around many of the open doors. Someone — maybe hundreds of someones — had looted this place. Unlike the doors of that central chamber, these smaller doors had given way to the efforts of looters — much of the work seeming to be recent.
I gripped my sword tighter. There could be other cultivators here. And they guarded their looted tombs with jealousy.
The halls turned suddenly, bent and spiraled and ramped upwards and away from that room at the heart of them. As I passed sealed doors with complex signs, they attempted to open, many of them broken or in pieces. They grinded with the noise of rattling and stone, crashing against rubble that held them open or fizzling and sparking.
I moved upward, twisting through dimly lit corridors. It didnt feel like I was making any progress; it felt like the walls were closing in.
A door glowed with swirling light as I passed it. I flinched back, freeing my blade and pointing it at the door as it erupted in the noise of grinding stone… and slid open.
[Anti-Light Reinforced Door, Level ???][Access Granted]
The door slid open. On the other side, there was a thin layer of oscillating, wavy black, like liquid standing straight up and rippling, interspersed with a white grid and dotted with what looked like stars. It looked like someone had carved out a piece of the night sky.
[Level 15 Challenge Room Portal]
[Accept?]
[yes/yes]
Before I could react, the wall of black slammed forward and over me.