The blood receded, and she was left— then, suddenly, she was standing, unsteadily, on a sturdy but not all that large wooden pier jutting out into a calm sea. A forest rose behind her, sweeping as though by so celestial artist’s brush, flat at first and then rising rapidly into a sheer and grey cliff face. Other than the pier, and perhaps a path buried deep in the forest behind her, she could find nothing that was of the work of mortal hands.
It took her a second of disorientation to realize that she was standing on the shore of Saffron Lake. Where, though, she had no clue— surely looking north, otherwise she would have seen East Saffron, but she was not aware of any islands in Old Saffron so… untouched. So remote.
“You did not have to be so cruel to her. The cat would have made a good student.”
“The elders decided. It was not my input alone.”
“You were an important voice in the decision, though. I still find it short-sighted that you so readily argued for his dismissal…” she blinked, focusing in on the conversation between the Outer Elder and… another woman, dressed in similarly deep red robes. Another elder. “He may not have made a good student, but we have accepted poor students before.”
“Poor students that showed potential. He had none.”
“You’re too hasty, Pugo.”
“And you, too soft, Daoist CinnabarRose.” Ostensibly, the Outer Elder— Pugo— had been the more respectful one in that exchange. For whatever reason, Lily got the impression that wasn’t actually the case. “Complete the welcoming ceremonies for . I have matters to attend to back at the University.”
“Of course you do.” But even as she was already speaking, the Outer Elder had disappeared once more into his terrifying teleportation thod. The pressure was imnse, but sothing blocked the worst of it from reaching her. A few seconds passed in silence after he left, before Daoist… Elder Cinnabar Rose turned to her. “I apologize for his actions. He acted out of your best interests, but he had always been a blunt and sowhat cruel man.”
“W-what?” She was so lost.
“Your companion.” She blinked, focusing despite all the bewildering things that were going on— Avyr was more important. “He wouldn’t have been able to beco a disciple of the Bloody Saffron Sect anyways. Or rather, as a cat, his body-plan wouldn’t work with our cultivation thods. It was for the best that he didn’t start off on a path unsuitable for him.”
Lily wanted to argue with her, but… she dared not. Not when she could feel the power of the woman in front of her, a boiling force barely bottled up and withheld. More qi than she’d ever felt from anyone, ever, including both Rr’an and the Outer Elder. “Who… who are you?”
“A good question.” The woman smiled fondly. “I am the Inner Elder of the Alchemy Palace, and the one who made that pill for you. I always observe my work. It’s rare that I get to make pills as powerful and subtle as the Opening Dan, and I’ll also be able to help if anything goes wrong. I’ve heard that you’re a rather special case…” oh. An Inner Elder. If she’d been afraid of the Outer Elder… “Co, this is a good place to do it. Sit down at the end of the pier. In ditative pose.” Slowly, almost dazedly, she followed, settling into the proper pose— adjusted, slightly by the elder, in echo of that hand-seal— and, ready…
She pulled out the pill, almost as though, bidden by so strange and divine urge, her body moved entirely without her will. So terrible force, as the wax split beneath the lightest of touches, and the fragrance of the pill filled the air, bloody and indomitable and aweso, in the sense of heavenly wrath. It was less than the enormous mountain of strength behind her. It was more than the entire sea before her. It was a the very breath of divinity, in that mont as the blood in her body leapt eagerly towards the pill—
She gasped. She did not even know, then, what was and what was not; reality fading to a mire of shifting images and twisting, ecstatic vision— visions, borne from the depth of her psyche, clawing up only to be washed away by the virtuous qi from the pill she had not even eaten.
A delicate hand grasped her own, cool and smooth, and jade, and they both raised to her mouth—
She placed the pill in her mouth, and burned.
A flood of qi filled her spirit, suffusing every corner and washing over every part, crushing down in a heavy spiral, twisting in a rotating sphere pushing, shearing and burning and scalding, and freezing. She scread, and she clenched her mouth shut, and she stared out wide-eyed at nothing as her spirit went through months of growth in the shape of seconds. It was so deep, the foundation, so vast, the pillar it built out of her, so bloody, the never-ending wound it dragged, so painful, so blissful— it was an emotion that she could not for the life of her na.
She saw it all.
She grasped it, and with a twist of instinct, directed it— to beco more than she was, to rise with the shift of her spirit and leap with the king of beasts, and soar with the sinuous dragons, and— emperor and immortal, god for a mont—
She ford herself back out of the rarified stuff of the heavens, and when she opened her eyes and gasped in a breath of air she was no longer Lily the Shedding student of the University of East Saffron, but rather Lily, the Opening disciple of the Bloody Saffron Sect.
A wisp of purple qi curled around her and caught her up to the heavens, and as they rocketed through the clouds with a speed unmatched by any she’d ever felt before— and as they shot through the skies—
She saw it, then, spread out below, with its nine lush peaks and its pagodas, and its lake of blood, paradise on earth—
The Bloody Saffron Sect.
Her new ho.
………
On the world of Soli, that vast ecunopolis, a sea of infinite humanity lived— in those golden-stone towers, that caught the light of the sun at the end of the eclipse— the empire humd with an almost living force. In the void above the planet, ten thousand vast warships hovered, slivers of silver in eternal guard against the enemies of Sunlight. Below the streets, which were the very crust of the world, a billion hands worked tirelessly to forge implents of war. In the towers, the brightest minds of dozens of worlds endlessly planned the architecture of a conquest the size of a realm. In the palaces, the highest lords of the empire cultivated with burning focus, their mind and wills devoted to the will of the empire.
In the Great Palace of the Golden Dawn, in a hall made of ten thousand of the finest treasures of the realm, on a dais wrought of the hearts of saints, behind a veil woven of the essence of the universe itself, sat a man. A man that the realm desperately tried to reject, and a man that in turn refused the realm.
The Emperor of the Empire of Nine Sunlights sat, wreathed by the terrifying power of tribulation deferred, and looked over the working of his empires— and it was good.
One of his High Lords entered the Innermost Sanctum, the Holy Refuge of his Divine Body, and kowtowed eleven tis in supplication. “Oh Great One, whose Beautiful Body shall delight in the twelve colors of the rainbow and be annointed with the oils of the most sacred fires, I co before you with urgent news from the Sacred World Aurelia.”
He raised his hand. The Immortal Ascension High Lord could not see it, but he could feel it, the way that the whole world around them quivered with that terrible twisting of fate. To anyone lesser, it would have been imperceptible.
The man kowtowed again, so awed at that majestic sensation that his head hit the floor with an audible crack of bone against gold. “Of course my most beloved liege! There has been an attack on one of the second-rate sects of the Enemy.” He raised a brow, and the Immortal Ascension cultivator sweated. “Of supre power, using so long-lost scripture of the Empire.” Ah, truly? Now his interest was piqued.
He spoke, and the world quivered like jelly. “What was it?” A raspy voice; so might even consider him sick. That was the image he presented to outsiders; a succession of sickly emperors and mad, profligate princes pampered only for their connection to the bloodline of ancient emperors. Little did they know that one of those very ancients sat there, watching— the spider in its web. Devious…
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“A beam of golden radiance,” the Immortal Ascension cultivator spoke. “And a shield woven out of the purest light, imbued with conceptual radiance of the most profound form. A worthy technique even for one of the High Lords.”
“Truly?”
Another kowtow. “I speak no lies, my Emperor!”
Hm… well, it was not outside the realm of possibility that a small sect had escaped the fall of his old empire and carried forth their traditions… he’d been slowly rooting those out, but it was a hard thing, when they were so deeply engrained. He’d only just gotten rid of that annoying Beixian Port, and there were so many like them…
His plans stretched into eternity, but for this? He supposed he could make an exception. “Find them. Bring those techniques to , and you will be rewarded beyond your wildest imaginations.” An impossible task, maybe…
His cultivators, his servants, would do impossible tasks for him. For they were his.
His people.
His empire.
The perfect plan of the single most powerful being in the entire realm.
Yes… yes, this was good. One day, soon, it would all be his again.
Just as it should be.
………
A car rumbled by behind him, the rumble of its passing a hymnal lody, in liturgic creed offered up, then, to heaven. Concrete, pleasantly warm against the pads of his paws, a faint breeze, the touch, then, now, caught up around him as it swirled and laughed, and left him behind. He stood there, buffeted by a sumr breeze— in the empty street, as the heavens above lay in that empyrean half-completion, towers of cloud pillaring up upon themselves in bulbous and cottony growth, until their ramparts lood imposingly over the whole world. He imagined, from which the immortals could look down, and judge.
He tried not to let it get to him, and yet still the coil of sickening doubt, of grueso defeat, clawed at his stomach until he felt like he was going to be sick. He tried to ignore it, but it was not ignorable— to succeed, even if he could, would an to succeed without Lily.
He was happy for her. He really was. Yet, still, he mourned for himself.
The 32nd Precinct of East Saffron was much the sa as it’d always been; a bit run-down, a bit ratty, and yet still filled with a faint and profound life; of the people that were the marrow of it, of the souls that were the soul of it, of the hands that were its architecture and its scattered grass, and the leaves of the street trees that swayed in their tempestuous dance. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he walked forward, passing it by; passing by the people who’d known him, and still knew him, and only gave him the briefest of glances as he walked by. So even nodded to him respectfully.
Soon, he reached it— the end of his small journey. It was curious, he couldn’t help but think, that this was where his paws had taken him, swept up by the sudden urge to be anywhere but the empty house that Lily had once lived in. He could na every tree, and pronounce the history of every rock, and only the small touches were different— where they’d rebuilt after Rr’an’s small rampage…
He could have gone there. Part of him, still, wanted to— they would not trust him, but they would use him, and his connection to the Great One would give him an intrinsic value that the other cats would have no choice but to respect. Inevitably, he knew— whether it was soon, or in a hundred years, when the next war broke out between the Empire of Nine Sunlights, that they would inevitably co into conflict once again. To achieve his goals…
Perhaps he would. Perhaps he wouldn’t. He did not know. He could not even really bring himself to care, so heavy was the malaise that had seeped unconsciously into his fur.
Whether he did, or not, he had one last task to do before he was free of it all. For everything that Mingtian had done for him, for everything that he’d given and how little he’d gotten back… if he claid to be the second most deserving of his ascension pill, then who would dare claim to be the first?
He pushed open the door to the library with that lift, little twist of paw that he’d long since gotten so used to, a sudden wave of nostalgia overtaking him when he did. It was such a petty thing to hold any pride in— and he’d never even told Lily— but the ease with which he’d navigated the building… there was sothing that spoke to him, in that… he snorted, as he slipped past startled readers and deeper into the abscess of knowledge that was the 32nd Library of East Saffron. A river of words, unreadable, trapped in the ice of their bookish forms— he dodged past them, and ascended the stairs, not paying them any heed. He just wanted to be there already.
Bounding, now, leaping up the stairs five at a ti in the curious lope of a six-limbed animal, and yet still silent— the second, and then the third floors passed in a flash, until he ca to a familiar office. A sudden and sharp burst of painful reminiscence alighted within him— this was where he’d first t Lily, all that ti ago, not too long past. This was where he’d…
It was empty. Recently so; he could see it in the way everything was left, still frozen in the mont of their working— as though a gust of wind had co through and spirited Mingtian away. He blinked, curious, and carefully sought to sense the auras of the mortals who lived and worked in the building…
The roof. A bright and cheery glow almost golden smoldered up there; it was pristine, and resplendent, and wrought of everything he’d ever expected Mingtian’s aura to look like. It was not the aura of a cultivator, but in so curious way, as his sense brushed against it, it was also not the aura of a mortal. It was not really an aura at all…
He took the stairs to the roof, pushing through the door and stepping out onto the barren, machine-riddled plain that overlooked the sea of Saffron cityscape. On the other end of the roof, arms crossed behind his back, stood Mingtian, staring with a… a weight, he could not describe it but it was a weight— out over the whole world.
Cautiously, he stepped forward. “Master Mingtian…”
“I am not your master.”
“Instructor, then.”
“I was only your instructor for a short ti.” He sighed, an eminently real sigh, the most real sound— he realized with a start— that he’d ever heard from the man. “I’m sorry, Avyr. I was fully convinced that you would achieve what you had set out to do. It is by no fault of your own that they passed you over… I can see, now, the machinations that lay within it.” Avyr did not speak; he was too confused to. How had Mingtian known that he’d been rejected already? “Had I known… ha, and here I thought I knew everything. It’s been… how long, since I’ve been so wrong? I’ve lost count.” Avyr did not speak, but the aura between them trembled and shivered, so impossibly majestic that he wondered how he’d ever missed it before. “They don’t know what they’ve missed. I almost feel bad for them— were you the sort to hold a grudge, I would imagine they’d just made themselves a truly terrifying enemy.” He wasn’t— “but you’re not. You’re too nice. In that, you are better than I was, at your age. I find it remarkable, just how often this little realm finds ways to prove wrong…”
“Mingtian… what…”
“One door closes; one door closes. The way of heaven is unknowable and profound; the virtue of things is as fathomless as the space between the stars. Perhaps this was always ant to be, that you would co to the only person in the realm who could teach you, and I would be once more forced out of my complacency.”
“What do you an?”
Mingtian chuckled. “I make a very bad hidden master.” His qi unfurled— the force of a bound sail catching to wind, the explosion of a bomb in the dead of night— the very rising of the sun, as it went from nothing to everything. More powerful, even, than the Outer Elder, more powerful than Rr’an, so powerful that it felt like a new star had been borne right in front of him—
He barely paid attention to it, for in the space between light and darkness he could feel sothing else— a leviathan that coiled around the veryheart of reality— the ten thousand stars, the very houses of heaven, sothing that made a part of himself that he’d never even realized he’d been growing start with fear and cower in the center of himself—
His nascent domain touched the domain that felt like divinity itself, and he realized that Mingtian was more than he seed.
He turned around, his blond hair now golden, like looking into the sun itself— his skin, once bronzed, now almost aglow in its perfection, his mortal form cast off like the skin of so beetle, so snake, left to scare passersby in the reflections of their cups. And those eyes! To look into them was to look into the very depths of boundless and infinite radiance. “Avyr.” He knelt before him, so that they were eye to eye, and held apart by only a foot or more of space. “You are worthy beneath the eyes of heaven. I beseech you now, in truth— beco my disciple, and learn the path of your immortal domain.”
In that mont— in the face of it all, as everything changed on the drop of a single grain of sand—
There was only one thing he could say. He bowed down before him, and spoke— “disciple follows master.”
And Mingtian smiled, for it was good.
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