The Door To All Marvels The Rising Sun

Mingtian was furious.

The door to Guxi’s office slamd open, loud enough to startle the woman as he stord in, slamming a hand down on the desk. “Where. Are. They.” For a long second, the woman didn’t respond— too shocked by the sheer audacity that he’d burst into her private residence— before her aura slamd down against him with a suddenly vicious force.

He didn’t let himself be deterred, though. He wasn’t going to let sothing as simple as a weak second-step cultivator’s aura get in his way— not when he had a real goal in mind. A piece of paper in his hand burned up— blank, not that Guxi knew that— and the totality of her aura was reflected back, crushing her instead. Joined, then, by an even greater power for just a second, cracking the floor around her and scattering the papers on her desk. The fancy pens made a pleasant noise as they skittered off the side and fell to the ground.

As the last of the paper burnt up, he released the pressure. “I won’t ask the sa way twice.” Guxi gasped for air, wide-eyed, barely keeping herself from falling over.

“Do you have—”

“Any idea of what I’m doing? Of course I do. Or was it not you that decided that the way the laws of the city bend to supre might?”

“You’re just a mortal.”

“I could kill you with a thought. In this space— between you and — I might as well be a god.” He sat down on her desk, giving her a furious look— a cold look, deathly cold, so redolent with the essence of his distaste that even an ant would have curled up in fear beneath its cruel dominance. “What did you do to them?”

“Nothing!” She squeaked out, face afla with sothing that might have been terror, or might have been fear. “I didn’t do anything to them! I didn’t hire those assassins!” For a long mont, they froze there— him, burning with a stranger god’s fury, her, pinned beneath that immolating disgust— before he turned away and pulled back his domain, recentering himself with a breath.

It… tracked. Unfortunately, it tracked. He would have liked to have a reason to kill Guxi, but re annoyance wasn’t a particularly good cause and everyone would suspect him anyways.

She’d sent assassins after him before, but their relationship had changed. In the sa way that everything tended to, though rather faster than he’d expected— on the tispan of mortals as it was. He wasn’t a teacher anymore, and her son wasn’t his student; she’d never attacked the kids before. Perhaps she wanted them out of her way… but, now that the difference between them was like heaven and earth, her motivation to do so was only so much the lesser. It wasn’t like getting rid of them would sohow magically make Xinshi capable of getting into the Bloody Saffron Sect.

He slumped. Just a little. Mortal emotions truly did co and ebb with such fervor… “where are they, then?”

“In their rooms. I advised—” she stressed that word— “that they don’t co out until they return to the University. I’ll be scheduling transportation for them tomorrow. It’s best that they remain out of the public eye when it cos to these sorts of things— the mory of the city can be shallow, so long as they can’t see it.”

“Fine.” He crossed his arms behind his back, standing straight— standing, with all the presence of the cultivator he definitely wasn’t. “Fine. But if I find that you were behind this…”

“I wasn’t.”

“Then I will rain destruction on you, the likes of which this city will rember for a hundred generations.”

“I don’t know who it was.” Her words, though, fell on deaf ears.

Mingtian had already left.

………

His second stop was more of a courtesy than anything. He even called Jie and told him that he’d be stopping by, if only to make sure that the person he was visiting was actually there when he arrived…

Nothing stopped him as he strode into the Academy, past those all-too familiar doors, architecture and hallways, and classrooms, and all the various different things he rembered from the ti they’d been his. Winter break wasn’t over yet, so the students hadn’t returned— but there were enough people in the building that his presence was noted. Whispers followed in his wake, which… he supposed that his falling out with Yuxan was less private than either of them would have liked.

So of them were bold enough to actually follow him— but bold or not, none of them stepped into Yuxan’s office. None but him.

The familiarity of the place was… striking. It was almost nostalgic, the fond mory of that victory… he supposed that Yuxan was probably still upset over the loss.

“Mingtian. It’s been a while.” It was almost amusing, how much the principal tried to affect that sort of unbothered ease, perfectly graceful as he stood there. “I heard what happened, and, of course I—”

“Did you do it?”

“Do what?”

Mingtian stalked forward a few steps, and slapped him. It was an incredibly satisfying thing to do. “I am done playing gas, Lan Yuxan. I permitted you this small leeway, your petty gas, out of respect— respect for the authority of your position, respect for East Saffron and the city I live in, respect for the ti I spent as your subordinate, duplicitous as the arrangent was. I gave you more than you could ever deserve… and now—” he slamd his hands down on both sides of the desk, “I am finished. Did. You. Do it?” He breathed, panting almost, in the glowing aftermath of that sudden and furious rage. All the little things that Yuxan had done to annoy him over the past months…

Perhaps even more than Guxi, he just wanted to wring his neck and be done with it. When he’d been one of the divines of the Divine Immortal Ever-Scouring Affray Sect, anyone who treated him with that level of respect would have been immolated.

Whatever Yuxan saw in his eyes, in the burning depths of his hatred laid bare— whatever it was, it scared him. Mingtian could taste it, in his aura, could see it, in the way he gulped and leaned back slightly. “I… no, no, I didn’t do anything. Other than the stuff that I did—” he flinched back as Mingtian leant forward— “which ended! After I sent the cat your way, that was the last thing I did, I promise! I’m not stupid enough to stand against soone who can withstand the whatever-under-the-heavens that damn cat was!”

“You’re not lying to , are you? Because if you are…”

“I won’t! I promise, I won’t! I’m done. I’m done, I’m done— if I’d known from the start I wouldn’t have done anything please, please, immortals above and hells below, just— just, spare . I won’t.” He was all but blubbering at that point. “Please.” Rasping, shuddering as he breathed— knowing how close he’d truly gotten to his own demise. “Please. Just… truce. I won’t ever bother you again, just, just…”

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Oh, how he wanted to slap him again and burn him to a crisp. How he wanted to show him just what sort of power he’d ssed with. He wanted to…

Except.

Except, it wasn’t necessary. It wouldn’t help solve the problem. It was finished. Between the two of them… Yuxan wouldn’t bother him again, not if he knew what was best for him. If he killed him, then he’d have to deal with all the consequences of that, and…

He sighed. “Fine. If I hear from you again…” he turned around, and stalked out through the crowd of instructors and staff trying and failing to listen for even the slightest hint of what’d been going on in Yuxan’s office— leaving, behind him—

A pathetic wreck of a man.

………

The man who materialized in the holding cell for two of the cultivators who’d attacked his dis— students— was not Leng Mingtian. Not as the city of East Saffron knew him, at least— no; he was sunlight condensed, golden brilliance, burning power, a solar refulgence cast into the shape of a man. He was fury, dripping from the heavenly spheres. He was dominion, perfect and absolute, a crystalline coruscant geotric thing. He was their small psychopomp.

To them, as he laid hands on them and bid them wake, as did the rising sun, power rushing through their bodies and purging the sedatives that kept them asleep— he was divinity itself.

They blinked open their eyes, and found themselves ensnared in his world. Filigrees of golden light ran down the concrete walls, curling around the windows and across every surface, and shimring, where they touched the hard steel bards.

“W… what is this?” The first of them, a man with a raspy voice and a throat wound from so poorly controlled technique, pushed themselves to their feet, clearly still delirious. “I’m… is this our hell? I thought that we’d…”

The second groaned beside him. “The bastard disciple stopped us from eating the pills. You were kind of out of it at the mont.”

“Then this is so sort of…”

“Impressive,” Mingtian said, feeling nothing but disgust. “That you can sit here and ignore , when you’ve already fallen into my grasp.”

They whirled to face him, clearly ill at ease. “Who are you?”

“I am your greatest nightmare.”

The man hesitated. The woman imdiately tried to rip out her own throat, screaming— “we live and die for the clan!”

Smart.

Not smart enough.

Golden lines of force erupted the walls faster than they could comprehend, formations waking and guided by his will binding— freezing both of them in place. He wasn’t gentle about it, either. “You understand the sort of situation you’re in. Good. Perhaps you’ll be wise enough to tell what I want to know, and I will give you the honor of a clean death.”

“You— you can’t do this! The laws of East Saffron—”

“an nothing to .” He cocked his head. “You really don’t understand, do you? You think that I, I of all people—” his voice, rising, that carefully leashed anger finally slipping that leash— “care about the laws of a tiny, mortal city?” His qi boiled within him, pulling harshly at his seals that only survived with how well he’d designed them. “To think that two foolish mortals would transgress against and think that they could hide away behind the walls of an organization made up of children and misguided neophytes?”

They were trembling, now, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He’d lined the room in various kinds of suppressing seals specifically so that he didn’t have to care, and beneath their aegis he released all but the last seal and punched a hole in reality. The ragged hole to the Chaos Sea shimred and bled in impossible aquamarine color, tinged fathomless, and the two assassins stared at him in a slowly dawning horror.

They knew, of course, nothing.

He lightened his grip on the portal, and with a sudden force everything in the room was pulled into the vast and infinite tumult of the Chaos Sea. Enshrined within the roiling, chaotic currents, he finally let loose the very last remnants of his seals, carrying them far, far away from the glimr of light that was Aurelia below.

Enshrined in perfect, golden power, he wrote the words of their prison out of the very stuff of chaos, binding them in chains that would have held a god and suspending them above the nothing. “You have sinned against the Immortal Sovereign of Boundless Radiance, and for that…”

“I’ll tell you, just— please, let live!” The woman hissed at the man to shut up and take his death with dignity, but the man… well, he was pretty sure that he was still deluded about the situation he’d found himself in. “It was the—”

“It was the Twenty-Sixth House Under Heaven! The Zhangs hired us and equipped us with everything we needed, and even told us where to go. We were only able to know their movents because the councillor for the precinct is part of a Zhang branch family!”

“Hm.” He wanted to crush the both of them and be done with it, and te out justice to the suddenly so very attractive target… but sothing bugged him about her sudden change in deanor. “I hope you don’t mind if I check.” He had never been particularly good at the arts ntal, but one did not need to be a psychic cultivator to understand the mind— and he’d had a lot of ti to understand whatever he wanted.

He had left his needles behind in the Celestial Realm, but one did not, could not rely desert their most treasured techniques. And, for him— ever since his first ascensions, when he’d just barely begun to grasp what qi even was— that had been his thread.

He pulled upon that binding set into his spirit; that vast thing, set into his soul, ca to life and spooled out around him his thread, his Thread. A gossar light thing, as wide as a single starlight beam and as glitteringly sharp as the sun’s harshest ray. It glowed, golden incandescent, molten bright, impowered by his domain enough that the very Chaos Sea around them shivered in its presence. It was not rely mortal, nor quite immortal— but rather in-between, trapped in the sa state he was, quasi-immortal, exquisitely powerful.

He made a gesture— unnecessary, really, given his mastery over the technique— and the thread split apart, a swarm of glimring haloing the wide-eyed woman. Runes flickered in their shape— shallow, without his needles to sew them into reality, but still radiating an ancient and implacable power utterly foreign to the small realm he stood in.

He swiped down, and the threads descended.

In the end, she’d wasn’t so much a human anymore as an incredibly detailed painting of gore splayed out and hoisted, a still sparking net of neurons and floating wires and agony. He’d been eviscerated like this once or twice in the past; it was never a fun experience.

Poking through her mind was like… between the aura of her dissipating spirit, his domain, and the many, many formations he could bring to bear, it was possible. Still, it was like walking through a dark forest at night. He simply didn’t have the sort of power he needed to use any of the powerful immortal formations that would have made the task more doable. Zhang… Zhang, he prompted her, and she dread of the Twenty Sixth House Under Heaven… as enemies.

Clever.

He turned to the man who was staring at the mad, twisted sculpture of golden thread and flesh he’d made of his companion. “She lied to .”

“Is she still…”

“Alive? Yes. Thinking?” Not as such; her ego had been snuffed out pretty much as soon as he’d pulled her apart, and she lived only to respond to his prompting and answer his questions. Still, that didn’t an his other prisoner had to know that. “She can feel every single thing I’ve done to her. She knows each thread, each cut neuron, each drop of blood running down their golden length… all alive, ignited with her imasurable pain. This is her hell.” He called forth another thread, directing it to hover threateningly in front of him as he tightened his chains. “Now… will you lie to ?”

“N-no! It was the Twin Pines clan! We were sent by the Twin Pines clan, because, rivals, the… I don’t know, the duel! It was probably because of the duel Song Banwei lost to—” he’d heard enough. He had his lead.

He had his target.

A spark of sunlight set the Chaos Sea alight around them, a burning conflagration leaping out to expand until a small sun consud every trace of his passing—

Leaving behind nothing at all.