After Seven Years of Seclusion, I Stand Half a Step from Immortality!

“Su Chen. Are you deaf? Come and receive the decree.”

Xuanqing Zhenren’s voice came down from the high platform. Cold.

I stood at the mouth of the sect square. The sun hit my eyes and I could not keep them open.

Seven years without sun.

Inside the Cave Residence there had only been the light of the Lightning Tribulation: purple, scorching, coming down on the crown of my head.

Eighty-one bolts of heavenly lightning. I dodged none of them. I took them all.

My bones broke three times. My meridians tore twice. My dantian burst open and rebuilt itself.

The Half-Step Immortal stage.

Eight hundred years of Tianxuan Sect, and no one had reached that realm.

And in those three thousand pairs of eyes out there, I found nothing but mockery.

“Seven years in seclusion, still Foundation Establishment. Tsk.”

“The genius head disciple of that year. Finished.”

“Told you. All flourish, nothing behind it.”

The talk crawled into my ears. I paid it no mind.

My attention was on the two people at the center of the square.

Liu Waner wore a new dress, water-blue, cut from the bolt of heavenly silkworm silk I had given her before I went into seclusion.

She had her arm through Zhao Ling’s, and she was laughing, bright and easy.

Zhao Ling stood half a head taller than he had seven years ago. His Golden Core spiritual pressure spread out, and the disciples around him stepped back.

He saw me. His mouth hooked up at one side.

“Well. Senior Brother’s out. Congratulations. Peak Stage of Foundation Establishment yet?”

Liu Waner tugged his sleeve and said something low. They both laughed.

I walked forward.

Xuanqing Zhenren stood on the platform with the sect elders behind him and inner disciples packed to either side.

He was holding a sheet of paper stamped with the sect seal.

The betrothal contract.

My father had settled it with the Liu family on his deathbed.

He raised his hand and tore the paper in two in front of everyone.

The pieces drifted down.

“Su Chen. Seven years in seclusion, no progress in your cultivation base at all. Tianxuan Sect does not keep trash.”

Xuanqing Zhenren looked at me. Nothing moved in his eyes.

“As of today your betrothal is void. The head disciple’s seat goes to Zhao Ling.”

“Master—”

“Master what?” He frowned. “What gives you the right to call me Master? Foundation Establishment. You’re worse than an Outer Disciple.”

Zhao Ling stepped out of the crowd and bowed with his hands together. “Thank you, Master.”

Then he turned to me, eyebrows up.

“Senior Brother. No, Su Chen. Junior Brother Su from now on. Take the hint and stop squatting in the Inner Sect. Go get a servant’s room in the Outer Sect. You’ll still scrape together a meal.”

The square laughed.

Liu Waner stood behind him, head down, shoulders shaking.

I could not tell whether she was laughing or holding something in.

I did not care any more.

I looked down at the two scraps of paper by my feet. The ink on them was not dry yet. No, it had dried seven years ago.

“Good.”

One word. That was all I gave them.

Xuanqing Zhenren paused. He had not expected me to agree so fast.

Zhao Ling paused too.

“Just… good?”

“You want the betrothal gone, I agree. The head disciple’s seat, sit in it if you like.”

I lifted my head and went around the square, face by face.

“But there is one thing I want straight.”

Xuanqing Zhenren’s brows drew together. “Ask.”

“Seven years ago, the day I went into seclusion, you said something.”

I held his eyes.

“You said when I came out, Tianxuan Sect would be proud of me.”

For a moment the square went quiet.

Something moved across Xuanqing Zhenren’s face and was gone.

“That was seven years ago. Seven years ago you were at the peak of Foundation Establishment. I thought you would make the breakthrough to Golden Core. And? Seven years on, you have not touched the edge of it.”

“Is that so?”

I smiled.

Then I turned and walked toward the mountain gate.

Behind me the square boiled over. Shouting, laughing, arguing.

“He’s actually leaving?”

“Trash should crawl.”

“Seven years of freeloading. And he still had the face to stay.”

I walked on, one step at a time, across the square, through the covered walk, past the long stair I had crawled up on my knees at twelve to take a master.

There was a crack in the stone under my feet. I had cut it myself, practicing sword forms.

Seven years. No one had repaired it.

No one remembered it either.

Chapter Two

I did not go to the servant quarters in the Outer Sect.

I went back to my own Cave Residence.

A paper seal was pasted across the door: cultivation base insufficient, vacate within three days.

Signed, Zhao Ling.

Dated two years ago.

He had put it up two years back. Which meant that two years back he was already waiting for me to come out, waiting for me to crawl.

I tore the seal off and pushed the door open.

The Cave Residence was empty.

My Pill Cauldron was gone. My bookshelves had been stripped. Even the rubbing of my father’s sword manual that used to hang on the wall was gone.

The only thing left was a torn straw mat in the corner, with a note lying on it.

Su Chen. I am keeping your things for you. If you want them back, come to Zhao Ling’s Cave Residence and kneel.

The writing was sloppy and arrogant.

I crushed the note in my fist.

Footsteps outside the door.

“Senior Brother Su? Are you in there?”

A girl’s voice, timid.

Junior Sister Shen Youwei pushed the door open with a food box in her hands.

She was an Outer Disciple, her cultivation base stuck at Qi Refining. Nobody in the sect looked at her twice.

Seven years ago I had taught her a few basic sword forms.

“Senior Brother, you’re out. I brought you something to eat.”

She set the box on the stone table and opened it. Two steamed buns and a dish of pickles.

“The Inner Disciples take all the good food in the sect kitchen. This is all I could get…”

“It’s enough.”

I picked up a bun and bit into it.

Seven years without food. My stomach had forgotten what to do with it.

Shen Youwei stood to one side, working up to something.

“Say it.”

“Senior Brother, are you really still at Foundation Establishment?”

I looked at her.

“What do you think?”

She bit her lip. “Half a shichen ago a purple bolt came down out of the sky. The whole of Tianxuan Sect felt it. A lot of the elders are calling it a heavenly omen. Nobody knows if it’s good or bad.”

“And then?”

“Zhao Ling says it was his breakthrough to the Peak Stage of Golden Core that pulled it down. Master praised him in front of everyone.”

I stopped chewing.

That purple bolt had been my Lightning Tribulation, called down when I crossed into the Half-Step Immortal stage.

Zhao Ling had taken the credit for it.

And Xuanqing Zhenren had believed him.

“Senior Brother, I don’t believe it was him.” Shen Youwei dropped her voice. “A Golden Core breakthrough can’t pull lightning of that grade. You’d need Nascent Soul at the very least.”

“How do you know that?”

“My cultivation base is low, but I read the sect’s old records. That kind of purple heavenly lightning only shows up during an immortal tribulation.”

The girl was sharper than half the elders in this sect.

“Senior Brother, are you—”

“Don’t ask.”

I swallowed the last of the bun and brushed the crumbs off my hands.

“Go back. Keep your distance from me, or they’ll make trouble for you.”

Shen Youwei opened her mouth, said nothing, and backed out.

The Cave Residence went quiet again.

I sat down cross-legged on the torn mat and closed my eyes.

Spiritual Energy churned inside me, vast as a sea. Every meridian carried power that immortal lightning had tempered.

The Half-Step Immortal stage.

One step from a true immortal.

And that Golden Core brat Zhao Ling was not even an ant next to me.

But I was in no hurry.

I wanted to see how long these people could keep dancing.

Footsteps outside again. Many of them this time.

“Su Chen! Clear out of this Cave Residence inside half an incense stick, or we charge you with defying sect law!”

Zhao Ling’s voice, with Inner Sect disciples behind him.

Here they came.

Chapter Three

I opened the door.

Zhao Ling stood at the front. Behind him, seven or eight Inner Disciples, every one of them below Golden Core, spiritual pressure pushed out and aimed at me on purpose.

To them, that much pressure was enough to put a Foundation Establishment cultivator on his knees.

I did not move.

Zhao Ling frowned.

“Su Chen, are you deaf? Master has given the order. Your Inner Sect standing is revoked. This Cave Residence is mine.”

“Where are my things?” I asked.

“What?”

“The Pill Cauldron in my Cave Residence. The books. The sword manual. You moved them.”

Zhao Ling tilted his head and laughed.

“Oh, that junk. The cauldron’s ruined, I burned it out. The books are holding up a table leg. And that sword manual of your father’s—”

He stopped, drawing the pause out.

“I wiped my shoes with it once. Then it looked dirty, so I threw it away.”

The disciples behind him laughed.

My fingers moved.

Spiritual Energy at the Half-Step Immortal stage rolled through my meridians for a heartbeat. The spiritual qi in the air jerked with it. Grass and trees shook with no wind.

One of the disciples behind Zhao Ling shivered. “Why is it suddenly so cold?”

Nobody paid attention.

“Moving or not?” Zhao Ling put out his hand, index finger pressed to my chest. “I’ll count to three. You don’t move, I move you.”

I looked down at his finger.

“Zhao Ling.”

“Hm?”

“Take your hand off me.”

He blinked, then laughed. “You’re threatening me? Foundation Establishment trash, threatening a Golden Core Senior Brother?”

He pressed harder. Spiritual Energy gathered at his fingertip and drove into my chest.

Golden Core Spiritual Energy, pushed in like that, was enough to shatter the meridians of anyone at Foundation Establishment.

Nothing happened.

His energy struck me and scattered. It did not even crease my robe.

Zhao Ling’s laugh stopped where it was.

“You—”

I raised my hand and brushed his finger aside.

That brush sent him sliding back three zhang, his boots leaving two white lines on the stone.

The square went quiet.

Zhao Ling looked down at his own hand. His fingers were shaking.

Not from fear. His meridians had taken the hit.

His head came up. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I moved your hand.”

“Impossible. Foundation Establishment—”

“I said take your hand off me.”

I looked at him. My voice stayed level.

Zhao Ling gritted his teeth. The disciples behind him looked at each other.

“We’re going to see Master.” He turned, sleeves swinging.

Two steps out he stopped and threw one line back over his shoulder.

“Su Chen. Whatever little trick you’re hiding, it doesn’t change what you are. Today I’ll make you pay a hundred times over.”

They left.

I went back inside and sat down.

That brush had used less than one ten-thousandth of my strength.

And Zhao Ling’s meridians would need three days to recover.

That did not matter.

He had said he wiped his shoes with my father’s sword manual.

That, I kept.

Chapter Four

Zhao Ling did not waste time.

Less than a shichen later, Xuanqing Zhenren’s messenger disciple arrived.

“Su Chen. Master summons you to the Council Hall. Now.”

I followed him there.

Five elders sat in the hall. Xuanqing Zhenren took the center. To his right and left: Elder Sun of the Alchemy Hall, Elder Chen of the Sword Hall, Elder Qian of the Law Hall, and Elder Zhou of the Scripture Pavilion.

Zhao Ling stood below the dais with Liu Waner beside him.

The moment I came in, he started.

“Master, Su Chen struck a disciple! I kindly reminded him to leave his Cave Residence, and he attacked me from behind and injured my meridians!”

He raised his right hand. The fingers were a little swollen.

Xuanqing Zhenren looked at me.

“Su Chen. Did this happen?”

“He put his finger in my chest. I moved his hand.”

“Nonsense!” Zhao Ling’s voice went up. “A Foundation Establishment cultivator, hurting a Golden Core one? You must have used an evil art!”

Elder Qian frowned. “Su Chen. Seven years in seclusion. What Cultivation Technique have you been practicing?”

“The Righteous Path.”

“Then explain Zhao Ling’s injury.”

“He’s weak.”

The hall went silent for two seconds. Then Zhao Ling’s face went red.

“Who are you calling weak?”

“You.”

Xuanqing Zhenren brought his palm down on the table. “Enough! Su Chen, you are still at Foundation Establishment, and striking a Junior Brother breaks sect law. Out of respect for your years of service, I will not punish you heavily. Leave the Inner Sect before sunset today. Move to the servant quarters in the Outer Sect.”

Liu Waner had not looked at me once.

She leaned against Zhao Ling’s side, head down, picking at her nails.

I remembered, suddenly, seven years ago. She used to stand beside me the same way. Only back then it was the Twin-Heart Jade I gave her that she picked at.

That jade hung at Zhao Ling’s waist now.

I saw it.

“Su Chen. Are you still here?” Xuanqing Zhenren’s patience was thinning.

“Before I go, one question.”

“Ask.”

“That purple heavenly lightning today. Who does Master think called it down?”

The air in the hall changed.

A few of the elders glanced at one another.

Zhao Ling stiffened, then said loudly, “I did, of course! My breakthrough to the Peak Stage of Golden Core stirred a heavenly omen. Master saw it himself!”

“The Peak Stage of Golden Core cannot pull purple heavenly lightning.”

I did not raise my voice. Everyone heard it.

Elder Zhou, the one from the Scripture Pavilion, moved a finger.

He was the only person in the hall who might know what that lightning meant.

He said nothing.

Xuanqing Zhenren snorted. “Absurd. You are at Foundation Establishment. What standing do you have to question a Golden Core disciple’s breakthrough omen?”

“None. I have no standing.”

I turned and left.

At the door, Zhao Ling’s voice came after me.

“Master, a man like that is a sickness in this sect. Throw him out.”

Xuanqing Zhenren did not answer.

But I knew he was thinking about it.

Chapter Five

I did not go to the servant quarters in the Outer Sect.

I went up the back mountain.

The back mountain was Forbidden Ground, sealed by a Formation that had never been lifted. They said the remnant soul of an ancient fierce beast was caged inside. Even Nascent Soul cultivators kept their distance.

To me the Formation may as well not have existed.

I stepped through. The lines of the Formation lit under my feet, then went out.

The spiritual qi up here was so thick it had nearly gone liquid. Every breath pulled Spiritual Energy into the body.

I sat down on a boulder at the summit.

The light went.

Below, the sect was all lamps and noise. Zhao Ling was probably celebrating his promotion to head disciple.

I closed my eyes and began working through the sword art my father had left me.

Zhao Ling had ruined the sword manual itself. The contents had been in my head for years.

I entered the sect at twelve, reached Foundation Establishment at fifteen and its peak at eighteen, and they called me the genius Tianxuan Sect saw once in a hundred years.

Master took me as his head disciple himself, and promised Liu Waner to me.

Back then Zhao Ling had only just joined the sect, still at Qi Refining, without a decent sword to his name. I gave him my old one.

At twenty I touched a thread of immortal qi and decided to seal myself away and push for the top.

Master said, “Go. When you come out, Tianxuan Sect will be proud of you.”

Seven years.

No one knew what I went through in that Cave Residence.

Crossing the immortal tribulation is not one bolt of lightning or two. The Half-Step Immortal Lightning Tribulation lasted three full years.

Three years of being struck.

Every bolt rebuilt me: bones shattered, meridians cut, dantian blown open, grown back, broken again, grown back.

The other four years went into rebuilding my cultivation base from the ground up.

Foundation Establishment straight through Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Spirit Severing, Body Integration, Great Ascension, and one step into the Half-Step Immortal stage.

No one had ever heard of a breakthrough like that.

Which was why I carried none of the marks: no Golden Core spiritual pressure, no Nascent Soul divine sense projection, nothing.

I had skipped all of it.

Under anyone’s probe, my cultivation base read as Foundation Establishment.

Unless I let the spiritual pressure out myself.

And then they would learn what the sky coming down meant.

A beast roar rolled up from deep in the mountain. The ground shook.

The remnant soul of the ancient fierce beast had caught my presence. It would not settle.

I opened my eyes and let out one thread of spiritual pressure.

One thread. Nothing more.

The roaring stopped.

The whole back mountain went so quiet a falling leaf would have been heard.

I closed my eyes again.

What was coming would come.

Chapter Six

Before dawn the next day, the sect’s alarm bell rang.

The emergency bell. The one that had not been rung in a hundred years.

By the time I came down from the back mountain, the whole sect had come apart.

Disciples ran for the square pulling on their robes. Elders went for the front mountain on flying swords.

A huge black river-dragon had coiled up at the front of the sect, black from head to tail, dark red veins running through its Scale Armour, two slit pupils fixed on the Mountain Gate of Tianxuan Sect.

A Spirit Severing demonic beast.

In the cultivation world, that grade of beast could end a second-rate sect.

The strongest cultivation base in Tianxuan Sect belonged to Sect Lord Taixuan Zhenren, at Body Integration.

But Taixuan Zhenren had left three years ago to travel and had not come back.

Which left the Nascent Soul elders as the strongest thing in the sect.

Against a Spirit Severing demonic beast, that was barely enough to stand.

“Every Golden Core disciple, set up a formation!” Xuanqing Zhenren shouted from the high ground, his face grey.

Zhao Ling charged out in front with his sword up, Golden Core Spiritual Energy wide open, leading over ten Golden Core disciples into the Tianxuan Sword Formation.

The river-dragon looked at them. Its tail swept.

The formation broke.

Over ten Golden Core disciples were thrown back with blood in their mouths. Three of them went out cold.

Zhao Ling hit the ground and rolled, his face covered in blood.

“Nascent Soul elders, strike!” Xuanqing Zhenren roared.

Three Nascent Soul elders joined hands and threw everything they had.

The river-dragon raised its head and roared. The sound broke every technique in the air. The three elders were thrown back dozens of zhang, white in the face.

“We can’t hold it!” Elder Sun’s voice cracked. “A Spirit Severing demonic beast. Nascent Soul is nothing against that!”

The river-dragon’s pupils swept across the crowd and locked on the disciples in the square.

It opened its mouth. A ball of dark red energy gathered there.

One hit from that would kill half the square.

“Shield the disciples!” Xuanqing Zhenren burned his Spiritual Energy and put himself in front.

He was at the Late Stage of Nascent Soul. He could take one hit. After that he would be finished.

I stood at the back of the crowd and watched.

Liu Waner was curled up beside Zhao Ling, shaking.

Zhao Ling could not get up. Several ribs were broken and his Golden Core energy was a mess.

The Senior Brother who had been so magnificent a moment ago could not even stand.

Shen Youwei had come to my side at some point and was pulling at my sleeve.

“Senior Brother, what do we do?”

“Get behind me.”

The river-dragon’s dark red ball took shape and came down at the square.

Xuanqing Zhenren set his teeth and took it.

Boom.

In the blast Xuanqing Zhenren coughed up blood and was thrown backwards by the shockwave.

The Protective Qi Light around him broke. His robes came apart.

The ball’s backwash kept pressing down on the square.

Three thousand disciples. Nothing left to stop it.

I raised my hand.

One finger.

The index finger, flicked.

A transparent Sword Qi shot from the tip, silent, and cut into the middle of that dark red ball.

The ball split down the centre, came apart in two, went past either side of the square, struck the cliff beyond, and blew two craters a hundred zhang wide.

Not a sound from anyone.

No one saw me move.

It was too fast.

Chapter Seven

The river-dragon had felt the threat.

Its pupils swept back and forth over the crowd, hunting for the source of that sword qi.

It found nothing.

I had pulled in every trace of my presence.

As far as it could sense, the square held nothing but a swarm of ants.

It flew into a rage, opened its mouth again, and gathered a second ball.

This one was twice the size of the last.

The elders were all wounded. Golden Core disciples lay across the ground. Nothing was left that could block another hit.

“It’s over…” Elder Sun sat down where he stood.

Xuanqing Zhenren held himself up on one knee, blood at the corner of his mouth, nothing left in his eyes.

The river-dragon’s ball filled and was about to loose.

“Enough.”

I walked out of the crowd.

I did not raise my voice. Everyone in that square heard it.

Every eye went to me.

Zhao Ling, flat on the ground, shouted himself hoarse. “Su Chen, are you insane? Get back! You’re Foundation Establishment. You go up there and you die!”

Liu Waner put a hand over her mouth.

A few disciples reached out to pull me back. Their hands stopped halfway and withdrew. They were afraid of being dragged down with me.

I walked to the centre of the square and faced the river-dragon.

Its pupils fixed on me. The ball turned to point my way.

I raised my right hand.

Spiritual Energy came up out of my dantian and ran the length of every meridian, and the meridians that immortal lightning had tempered gave off a thin hum.

I did not release my spiritual pressure.

I closed my fist.

The river-dragon stopped.

Its pupils contracted. The ball in its mouth went unstable, the dark red light pulsing.

It was afraid.

A Spirit Severing demonic beast, afraid of a human at Foundation Establishment.

Its animal instinct had told it that the thing in front of it was not prey.

It was a natural enemy.

“Leave.”

One word out of my mouth.

There was a thread of spiritual pressure in it. One thread, and only a Half-Step Immortal’s.

The ball burst apart on its own. The river-dragon’s huge body lurched backwards, its Scale Armour crackling, its pupils full of fear.

“Did you not hear me?”

I took one step forward.

The river-dragon turned and ran.

A Spirit Severing demonic beast, turning and running.

Its body broke two mountain peaks as it fled. It went ten times faster than it had come, and was gone over the horizon.

Not a sound on the square.

Three thousand disciples, five elders, all of them rooted where they stood.

What had they just seen?

A Foundation Establishment disciple, standing in front of a Spirit Severing demonic beast, saying one word, and the beast running?

None of them could make sense of it.

Shen Youwei had both hands over her mouth. Her body was shaking, and what was in her eyes was not fear.

Zhao Ling’s mouth hung open. Nothing came out.

Liu Waner stared at my back and gripped her skirt until her knuckles showed.

Xuanqing Zhenren got up slowly and wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve.

“Su Chen… what are you…”

“I told you. The Peak Stage of Golden Core cannot pull purple heavenly lightning.”

I did not turn around.

“Yesterday’s lightning was not Zhao Ling’s. It was mine.”

Chapter Eight

I thought that would wake them up.

I was wrong.

Less than half a shichen after the river-dragon pulled back, Zhao Ling began patching his story.

“That thing was already in its decline. Its Spiritual Energy was unstable, it could have collapsed at any moment. Su Chen just got lucky. It scared itself off.”

He lay in the Alchemy Hall having his wounds seen to, a ring of disciples around him, telling it with gestures and everything.

“Think about it. How does a Foundation Establishment cultivator scare off a Spirit Severing demonic beast? Ridiculous.”

“Right, right. Senior Brother Zhao has a point.”

“It must have been the elders’ attacks that did it. Wounded its core.”

“Su Chen just got lucky.”

A mouth can bend any fact it likes.

I stood outside the Alchemy Hall and heard all of it.

Liu Waner was inside too, feeding Zhao Ling Medicinal Pills.

“Ling, stop talking. Rest.”

“Waner, did you see that? The trash actually tried to play the hero. Don’t worry. Once I’m healed, I’ll grind him down in front of everyone at the Grand Tournament. Let them all see who the first man of Tianxuan Sect is.”

Liu Waner pressed her lips together and smiled.

I turned and left.

Ten-odd steps on, quick footsteps came up behind me.

“Su Chen.”

Elder Zhou. The one from the Scripture Pavilion.

He was the oldest of the five elders and the quietest.

“Come with me.”

He took me to the back courtyard of the Scripture Pavilion, checked that no one was near, and spoke.

“Your cultivation base is not Foundation Establishment.”

It was not a question.

“Elder Zhou has a good eye.”

“I have read the records. Purple heavenly lightning only appears during an immortal tribulation. Seven years in seclusion, and the tribulation you crossed was that one.”

I said nothing.

“What realm are you at now?”

“Half-Step Immortal.”

Elder Zhou’s hand shook.

He had lived more than four hundred years, a Nascent Soul cultivator, and had seen any number of geniuses.

But the Half-Step Immortal stage he had only ever seen as four characters in an old book.

“A Half-Step Immortal at twenty-seven… in eight hundred years… no, in the ten thousand years of the cultivation world…”

He pulled in a breath and pressed the feeling down.

“Why have you not said anything?”

“Would they have believed me?”

Elder Zhou was silent.

“Xuanqing cannot see your cultivation base?”

“At the Half-Step Immortal stage, a low-level cultivator’s probe reads Foundation Establishment. It is what happens after an immortal tribulation rebuilds the meridians. The records say so.”

“I know. That is why I have been unsure.” Elder Zhou nodded. “But the others…”

“The others see only what they want to see.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Isn’t the Grand Tournament in three days?”

Elder Zhou paused.

I smiled.

“Zhao Ling says he will grind me down at the Grand Tournament. I’d like to oblige him.”

Chapter Nine

The Grand Tournament came once every three years. Every disciple entered, grouped by cultivation base.

Foundation Establishment group, Golden Core group, Nascent Soul group.

By my cultivation base, I was put in the Foundation Establishment group.

When the list went out, the whole sect came apart.

“Su Chen actually has the face to enter the Grand Tournament?”

“Foundation Establishment group? Ha. An old Foundation Establishment man of twenty-seven, fighting a pack of kids in their teens?”

“Have you no shame?”

The disciple taking names at the registry desk looked at my name and laughed until he could not straighten up.

On the day, three dueling platforms went up on the square.

The Foundation Establishment platform was the smallest and drew the least attention.

Every eye was on the Golden Core group, where Zhao Ling was the favourite.

I stood in the Foundation Establishment waiting area among disciples of fourteen and fifteen, all of them staring at me with open curiosity.

“You’re Senior Brother Su Chen? The one who sealed himself away for seven years?”

“Mm.”

“Are you… really still at Foundation Establishment?”

“What do you think?”

The boy scratched his head and ran off.

Thirty-two entrants in the Foundation Establishment group. Five rounds of elimination.

First round. My opponent was a young miss of thirteen, Early Stage Foundation Establishment.

Her hand shook on the sword.

“Senior Brother Su, can I… can I just yield?”

“Why?”

“I can’t beat you. You’re at the peak of Foundation Establishment and I’m only Early Stage…”

“Get up here and try.”

She screwed up her nerve and thrust.

I turned sideways, let it pass, and tapped her shoulder with my palm.

“Your form has an opening. Your left shoulder drops when you strike. Fix that.”

The girl froze.

“So did I win or lose?”

“You won.”

I stepped down off the platform.

The square erupted.

“Su Chen conceded! He can’t even beat a Foundation Establishment beginner!”

“Ha! Trash among trash!”

The laughter rolled over the square.

Over in the Golden Core group, Zhao Ling had just finished a match. He wiped the blood off his blade and looked my way.

“Su Chen. How’s it going? Want me to teach you a move or two?”

His voice carried across the whole square and brought a bigger laugh with it.

Liu Waner stood in the stands, shook her head, and turned her face away.

Shen Youwei was stamping her foot in the corner.

“Senior Brother, why won’t you fight? You could—”

“Wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For the Golden Core group to finish.”

Shen Youwei did not understand.

She understood soon enough.

In the Golden Core final, Zhao Ling faced a disciple called Fang Jin, Late Stage Golden Core.

Zhao Ling won, but only just, and he came off with several cuts.

He stood at the centre of the platform, raised his sword, and took the cheering.

“Zhao Ling! Zhao Ling! Zhao Ling!”

Xuanqing Zhenren stood on the high platform, proud of him.

“Zhao Ling, first in the Golden Core group. Three Grade Six spirit pills and a thousand Spirit Stones.”

Zhao Ling dropped to one knee and saluted with fist in palm.

Then he stood and looked at me.

“Su Chen. Weren’t you entering the Grand Tournament? Come up. If you won’t fight in the Foundation Establishment group, fight me.”

The square went quiet for a second, then boiled.

“Senior Brother Zhao is going to fight Su Chen? Golden Core against Foundation Establishment?”

“Isn’t that bullying?”

“He asked for it.”

His intent was plain. He wanted to crush me in front of everyone and stamp me into the ground.

I smiled.

And walked up onto the platform.

Chapter Ten

On the platform, Zhao Ling stood across from me with his sword up, Golden Core Spiritual Energy wide open, spiritual pressure rolling off him in sheets.

“Su Chen. I’ll give you one chance. Kneel, call me Eldest Senior Brother in front of the whole sect, and I’ll let you off unmarked.”

The square went silent.

Three thousand pairs of eyes on me.

I stood across from him with empty hands. No sword.

“Not kneeling?” Zhao Ling sneered. “Don’t blame me then.”

He moved.

Full Golden Core force. His longsword wrapped in Spiritual Energy, the light of it stinging, straight for my chest.

Fast.

For Foundation Establishment.

To me, that sword was slow.

The tip came within three inches of my chest.

I put out two fingers and caught the blade.

Every sound on the square went out.

Zhao Ling’s eyes bulged.

He poured Golden Core Spiritual Energy into the sword and tried to pull it free.

It did not move.

“You—”

I let go.

He staggered back two steps, caught himself, his face going red.

“A hidden weapon! You used a hidden weapon!”

“I caught your sword with two fingers. You call that a hidden weapon?”

“Impossible! Foundation Establishment can’t do that!”

He came again at full force, Golden Core Spiritual Energy flooding the longsword, and used Tianxuan Sect’s signature sword art, the Tianxuan Seven Forms.

First Form, Sunder Wind.

I turned aside.

Second Form, Split Earth.

I stepped back half a pace.

Third Form, Crush Mountain.

I flicked it away.

Fourth Form, Burn Heaven.

Fifth Form, Annihilate Sea.

Sixth Form, Pierce Void.

After six forms Zhao Ling was gasping, soaked in sweat, more than half his Spiritual Energy gone.

My robe had not even shifted.

“Where’s the seventh?” I asked.

Zhao Ling ground his teeth.

He had never learned the seventh. That was his best-kept secret.

I had just said it out loud in front of everyone.

“You—”

“I learned this sword art at sixteen. All seven. Do you want to see what the seventh looks like?”

I raised my hand.

The index finger drew a line in the air.

Sword Qi appeared out of nothing, ten times the force of his six forms put together.

Seventh Form of the Tianxuan Seven Forms: Slay God.

The Sword Qi swept the platform. The Protective Qi Light around Zhao Ling broke at once.

It carried him off the platform and into the stone flags of the square, where he drove a body-shaped crater.

He tried to get up. He got halfway twice, his arms gave, and he went down again.

His Golden Core had shattered.

No. Not shattered. I had held back. Cracked.

A year or so and he would recover. In that year he would be weaker than a Foundation Establishment beginner.

Dead silence.

Xuanqing Zhenren stood on the high platform, rigid.

All five elders were on their feet.

Three thousand disciples, and not one of them spoke.

Liu Waner ran to Zhao Ling and lifted his bloody face, then looked back at me, and there was nothing on her face but terror.

I stood on the platform and drew my fingers back.

“Zhao Ling. I did not use my full strength. That strike was about one ten-thousandth of my cultivation base. Do you want to go on?”

Blood frothed at his mouth. Nothing came out.

“Su Chen!” Xuanqing Zhenren flew down onto the platform and put himself in front of Zhao Ling. “What realm are you at?”

I looked at him. The man who had taught me to cultivate, promised me a future, and then pushed me down into the mud with his own hands.

“Does Master want to see?”

“Speak!”

I stopped hiding.

The spiritual pressure came out.

Half-Step Immortal pressure poured out of me, and the whole Mountain Gate of Tianxuan Sect shook.

The sky changed. Black clouds churned. Purple lightning flickered inside them, the same as the bolt from yesterday.

The ground cracked. The stone flags of the square broke one after another, and every Protective Qi Light in the crowd swayed.

Nascent Soul elders’ legs gave under them.

Golden Core disciples dropped straight to their knees.

Foundation Establishment disciples were flat on the ground and could not rise.

Only Xuanqing Zhenren was still standing, and there was no blood left in his face.

“This… this is…”

“The Half-Step Immortal stage.”

Elder Zhou’s voice came out of the crowd, old and shaking, every word clear.

“The Half-Step Immortal stage! Eight hundred years of Tianxuan Sect, and no one has ever reached it! That purple heavenly lightning was not Zhao Ling’s. Su Chen called it down crossing his immortal tribulation!”

The square had nothing to say.

Chapter Eleven

I pulled the spiritual pressure back.

The sky settled. The ground stopped shaking.

The shaking in people had only begun.

Xuanqing Zhenren stood on the platform, mouth working, and got one sentence out.

“Su Chen… you… seven years ago you already…”

“Seven years ago I touched a thread of immortal qi and went into seclusion for Tribulation Transcendence. Eighty-one bolts of heavenly lightning. I carried them for three years.”

“Three years…”

“The other four went into rebuilding my meridians, and the breakthrough to the Half-Step Immortal stage.”

His legs were shaking.

Not from the spiritual pressure. From fear, and not fear of me: fear of what he had done.

He had driven out a Half-Step Immortal with his own hands.

He had pushed the only immortal seed Tianxuan Sect had seen in eight hundred years out past the sect gate.

“Master, no, Su Chen,” he had changed how he addressed me, “there must be a misunderstanding. I did not know you were…”

“You did not know?”

I cut him off.

“Seven years ago when I went into seclusion you said Tianxuan Sect would be proud of me when I came out. Seven years later I came out, and you tore up my betrothal, took my place as head disciple, and called me trash in front of them all.”

“I—”

“My Cave Residence was emptied. My father’s sword manual was used to wipe shoes and thrown away. My Pill Cauldron was burned out. My books were put under a table leg. Did you know?”

Xuanqing Zhenren turned on Zhao Ling.

Zhao Ling lay in the crater with his face in the rubble and did not look up.

“Zhao Ling!” Xuanqing Zhenren shouted. “The sword manual. Is it true?”

Zhao Ling said nothing.

Liu Waner knelt beside him, shaking.

“Su Chen,” Xuanqing Zhenren turned back, and he actually began to bend at the waist, “your Master was wrong—”

“Don’t.”

I stepped back out of the bow.

“Master’s knees are worth too much. You did not kneel seven years ago. No need to kneel today.”

He froze halfway down.

Below the platform, three thousand disciples had gone to their knees.

Not because I made them. A Half-Step Immortal cultivation base is worth a knee on its own.

In the cultivation world, realm is law.

A Half-Step Immortal is already the ceiling of the Mortal World.

“Su Chen, what do you want?” Elder Sun’s voice trembled. “The Sect Lord’s seat? Head disciple? Name it.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Then what?”

“I want my father’s sword manual back.”

The square went quiet.

A Half-Step Immortal cultivator, turning down the Sect Lord’s seat, turning down Spirit Stones and Medicinal Pills, asking only for a sword manual someone had used to wipe his shoes.

Zhao Ling finally lifted his head. Blood and mud covered his face.

“The manual… I threw it on the rubbish heap on the back mountain…”

I closed my eyes.

When I opened them, a white light came from the back mountain and settled in my hand.

The rubbing of my father’s sword manual, creased, one corner torn, the print of a boot sole still on it.

I folded it and put it inside my robe.

“One more thing.”

I looked at Liu Waner.

Chapter Twelve

Liu Waner knelt beside Zhao Ling, shaking all over.

She felt my eyes on her and her head came up.

“Su Chen, I…”

“The Twin-Heart Jade.”

“What?”

“The one on your neck. I gave it to you before I went into seclusion. Give it back.”

Her hand went to her throat.

The jade was not there. She had taken it off seven years ago and given it to Zhao Ling, and Zhao Ling wore it at his waist as an ornament.

“Su Chen, let me explain.” She shuffled two steps closer on her knees. “I thought something had gone wrong in your seclusion. Seven years and no word. I thought you were dead—”

“You thought I was dead, so you turned around and took up with my Junior Brother?”

“I…”

“Zhao Ling put that seal on my Cave Residence two years ago. You two were already together by then, weren’t you?”

Liu Waner’s face went white.

“In the third year of your seclusion, Zhao Ling made his breakthrough to Golden Core and Master started to favour him. Everyone said you were not coming back. They said the seclusion had gone wrong, that you had died of Qi Deviation inside that Cave Residence.”

“And?”

“I was alone in the sect with nothing to hold on to… Zhao Ling was good to me. He looked after me…”

“He looked after you by emptying my Cave Residence, wiping his shoes with my father’s sword manual, and wearing the jade I gave you everywhere he went.”

“I didn’t know about the sword manual!”

“You didn’t know? My Pill Cauldron was standing in Zhao Ling’s Cave Residence. My books. All my things. You didn’t know?”

Liu Waner opened her mouth. Nothing came.

She knew.

Every piece of it.

She had not cared.

To her, a Foundation Establishment fiancé who had vanished into seven years of seclusion was worth less than a living Golden Core lover.

“Su Chen.” She grabbed the hem of my robe. “I was wrong. I know I was wrong. You’re a Half-Step Immortal now, you’re the strongest man in Tianxuan Sect, I—”

“You want to come back?”

She lifted her face, swimming in tears.

“Do you think I would have you?”

Her hand went still on the cloth.

“Seven years ago you said we would marry when I came out. Seven years later you had your arm through another man’s and you were laughing. Liu Waner, it isn’t that I won’t have you. From the moment you took that jade off, you stopped being worth having.”

I bent down and pulled the Twin-Heart Jade off Zhao Ling’s waist.

There was a crack across it.

A fresh crack.

I closed it in my palm, pulled my Spiritual Energy back, and the jade went to powder that ran out between my fingers.

Liu Waner sat down where she was and wept.

Zhao Ling dragged himself up and put a hand on her shoulder, his voice raw.

“Su Chen, she stayed with you three years at least—”

“Shut up.”

I did not look at him.

“You can’t even keep yourself alive and you speak for other people? Nurse your Golden Core. A cracked core is painful to mend.”

Zhao Ling turned a sick colour and had nothing to say.

I turned and walked down off the platform.

Three thousand disciples opened a path without being told.

Every face there wore the same expression. Regret.

Regret is worth nothing. It never has been.

Chapter Thirteen

The Grand Tournament was left unfinished.

Early the next morning, Xuanqing Zhenren came to my door with all five elders.

Not a summons. A visit.

The five Nascent Soul elders stood at the back. Xuanqing Zhenren stood in front with a brocade box in his hands.

“Su Chen. Open the door.”

I opened it.

He held out the box.

“This is the Sect Lord’s Token of Tianxuan Sect. Taixuan Zhenren left a written order before he went out three years ago: if anyone in the sect reaches Spirit Severing or above, he may take the Sect Lord’s seat. You are at the Half-Step Immortal stage, well past Spirit Severing. The seat is yours.”

I did not take it.

“Su Chen.” Elder Sun stepped forward. “The sect needs you. With no Sect Lord to hold it, Tianxuan Sect’s standing in the cultivation world has dropped a thousand zhang. That river-dragon the day before yesterday proved it. If you had not acted, the sect would be gone.”

“What does the sect’s survival have to do with me?”

A few of the elders’ faces changed.

“You are a disciple of Tianxuan Sect—”

“Yesterday you were sending me to the servant quarters in the Outer Sect.”

Silence.

Elder Qian cleared his throat. “Su Chen. We had eyes and no sight, before—”

“Elder Qian, you sit in the Law Hall. Zhao Ling took over my Cave Residence, destroyed my property, and claimed credit for my heavenly lightning. Did you ever look into any of it?”

Elder Qian lowered his head.

“Elder Chen, you sit in the Sword Hall. Zhao Ling learned the Tianxuan Seven Forms out of my books. Did you know that?”

Elder Chen went purple.

“Elder Sun, you sit in the Alchemy Hall. How many Medicinal Pills did Zhao Ling make in my Pill Cauldron and keep for himself? Did you ever check?”

Elder Sun opened his mouth and got nothing out.

I went from one to the next.

“Five of you, plus my Master. Six Nascent Soul cultivators, played for fools by one Golden Core brat. He said the lightning was his, you believed it. He said I was trash, you believed it. He said he was a genius, you believed that too.”

“That is not eyes and no sight.”

“That is stupid and rotten.”

Six men stood at my door and not one dared answer.

Every word I had said was true.

Xuanqing Zhenren pulled in a breath and went down on one knee.

“Su Chen. Your Master has wronged you.”

I looked down at his grey hair and remembered the day at twelve when I came to take a master.

He had stood at the Mountain Gate that day, put his hand on my head, and said, “From today, you are my head disciple.”

Fifteen years had passed.

“Master. Get up.”

“Not until you forgive me.”

“My forgiving you has nothing to do with whether you kneel.”

I went around him and out of the Cave Residence.

“I don’t want the Sect Lord’s seat. Let whoever wants it sit in it. Zhao Ling is not fit for it.”

“Then what do you—”

“I’m leaving Tianxuan Sect.”

Chapter Fourteen

When word got out, Tianxuan Sect came apart at the seams.

A Half-Step Immortal cultivator was leaving?

It was the same as a sect pulling out its own sea-calming needle.

The disciples signed a joint petition begging me to stay. Inner Sect and Outer Sect together. Three thousand names.

The elders took turns coming to talk me round.

Even Zhao Ling sent word through someone else: if Su Chen stays, I give up the head disciple’s seat.

I ignored all of it.

On the third day, something happened that nobody had counted on.

A golden seam split open in the sky. An old man in white robes stepped out of it, walking on empty air, and came down onto the Tianxuan Sect plaza in a single stride.

Everyone froze.

The spiritual pressure coming off that old man was heavier than anything I could put out at full force. This was a true Immortal-realm cultivator.

“Taishang Immortal Sect. Elder Xuanyuan. By order of the Sect Lord, I have come seeking the one who achieved Tribulation Transcendence under purple lightning.”

The old man in white swept the courtyard with his eyes, his gaze passing over every face, and came to rest on me.

He walked up to me and looked me over from head to foot.

Then he smiled.

“Twenty-seven years old, and already Half-Step Immortal. Good. Very good indeed.”

“You know me, senior?”

“Three days ago, that purple heavenly lightning was felt across the whole cultivation world. Half-Step Immortal tribulation light is a thing seen once in ten thousand years. The Sect Lord of Taishang Immortal Sect cast the divination himself and traced it to Tianxuan Sect.”

He drew a golden jade tablet from his sleeve.

“Taishang Immortal Sect will take you as a core disciple, directly under the Sect Lord. This tablet is an entry token the Sect Lord refined with his own hands. In the whole cultivation world, only three have ever been issued. Accept it, and you Join the Sect at the highest seat there is.”

A collective breath was sucked in across the plaza.

Taishang Immortal Sect.

The highest sect in the cultivation world, said to hold several true Immortal-realm masters.

Set against Taishang Immortal Sect, Tianxuan Sect was not fit to hold their shoes.

And the Sect Lord of Taishang Immortal Sect had issued an entry token himself. What did that mean?

It meant that my standing in the cultivation world already far outstripped the Sect Lord of Tianxuan Sect.

Far outstripped everyone standing here.

Far outstripped any height they could reach in their lifetimes.

The color drained from Xuanqing Zhenren’s face until there was nothing left.

The five elders exchanged looks, and there was nothing in their eyes but the chill of hindsight.

Zhao Ling ran out of the Alchemy Hall, saw the scene, and his legs went soft. He sat down hard on the ground.

Liu Waner stood in the crowd, lips trembling, unable to get a single word out.

“Elder Xuanyuan,” I said, taking the golden tablet, “I am willing to go.”

“Good. Then come with me.”

“Wait.”

I turned around and took one last look at the mountain gate of Tianxuan Sect.

Fifteen years ago, a twelve-year-old boy knelt before that gate, knocked his head three times, and took his vows as a Tianxuan disciple.

He had been full of hope. He thought he had found the place where he belonged.

Seven years in seclusion. He crossed the immortal tribulation. And when he came out, he was treated as trash.

Betrothed and then discarded. Stripped of his rank. Mocked. Cast out.

That was what Tianxuan Sect had given him in return.

“Su Chen.” Xuanqing Zhenren’s voice came from behind me, hoarse and thin. “Will you come back?”

I did not turn around.

Chapter Fifteen

I stepped up onto the void with Elder Xuanyuan, and my body rose slowly into the air.

Tianxuan Sect shrank beneath my feet. The faces of three thousand disciples on the plaza blurred into nothing.

Shen Youwei ran out to the middle of the plaza and waved up at me.

“Senior Brother! You promised to teach me swordplay!”

I looked down at her.

A little girl at the Qi Refining stage. Out of three thousand people in Tianxuan Sect, she was the only one who brought me two steamed buns and a dish of pickles the day I came out of seclusion.

She was the only one who believed that the purple lightning had not been Zhao Ling’s.

She was the only one who never once looked down on me.

I raised a hand and pointed down.

A gentle thread of Spiritual Energy left my fingertip and landed between Shen Youwei’s brows.

Golden light wrapped her whole body. The qi inside her began to churn, wild and fast. Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core…

In one breath she broke through three realms.

Golden Core.

A Golden Core cultivator at fifteen.

In Tianxuan Sect, that made her a genius of the very first order.

The plaza erupted.

Shen Youwei touched her own dantian, stunned out of her wits.

My voice came down from high above, clear enough to land in her ear.

“Cultivate properly. In three years, come find me at Taishang Immortal Sect.”

Then I looked at Xuanqing Zhenren.

He stood on the high platform, hair blown loose in the wind, his face all weather and wear.

I hesitated for one moment.

In the end, I spoke.

“Master.”

His whole body jerked.

“You have eyes and no sight. You listened to one side and believed it, and you wronged me for seven years. But the year I was twelve, you took me in, you let me Join the Sect, you taught me to cultivate, you gave me a meal. That debt I acknowledge.”

“If Tianxuan Sect is ever in danger, send word to Taishang Immortal Sect. For the sake of fifteen years as master and disciple, I will come.”

Xuanqing Zhenren’s lips trembled for a long time.

In the end he said nothing at all. He just lifted his sleeve and wiped his face.

I took my eyes away and swept one last look over Zhao Ling and Liu Waner.

Zhao Ling sat on the ground, a wreck from head to foot. Of that once smug, self-satisfied face there was nothing left but ash.

The head disciple’s seat he had schemed for, the fiancee he had taken, the Cave Residence, the Pill Cauldron, the books — all of it had become a joke.

Because the man he had robbed was something he would spend his whole life looking up at and never reach.

Liu Waner stood beside him, tears running down her face.

Perhaps she was regretting it.

But regret, as I said, is not worth much.

“Let’s go.”

Elder Xuanyuan stroked his beard and smiled. He flicked his sleeve and tore the void open.

A golden seam unrolled across the sky, and at the far end of it stood an immortal mountain floating on a sea of clouds, its spiritual qi so thick it had turned to mist and was flowing.

Taishang Immortal Sect.

I stepped through the seam.

Behind me, three thousand disciples of Tianxuan Sect knelt as one.

They did not kneel out of fear.

They knelt because they finally understood what they had thrown away.

In the last moment before the void closed, I heard a sigh come through the wind.

I do not know whose it was.

But I no longer needed to look back.

The heavenly lightning woke me.

It also cut every road behind me.

Ahead lies the immortal path.

Behind lies dust.

(The End)